










am?--. 



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Making J I 
the Most 
of Life 

J-I^Miller 





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10M— -P. L. 560—1-3-18. 



R. 8967-18. 



PRESENTED BY 



TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D, C 
IN COOPERATION WITH THE 
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 
FOR ARMY AND NAVY CAMPS 




DR. J. R. MILLER'S BOOKS 


A Heart Garden 


Joy of Service 


Beauty of Every Day 


Lesson of Love 


Bethlehem to Olivet 


Making the Most of Life 


Building of Character 


Ministry of Comfort 


Come ye Apart 


Morning Thoughts 


Dr. Miller's Year Book 


Personal Friendships of 


Evening Thoughts 


Jesus 


Every Day of Life 


Silent Times 


Finding the "Way 


Story of a Busy Life 


For the Best Things 


Strength and Beauty 


Gate Beautiful 


Things to Live for 


Glimpses through Life's 


Upper Currents 


Windows 


When the Sohg Begins 


Go Forward 


Wider Life 


Golden Gate of Prayer 


Young People's Problems 


Hidden Life 




BOOKLETS 


Beauty of Kindness 


Marriage Altar 


Blessing of Cheerfulness 


Mary of Bethany 


By the Still Waters 


Master's Friendships 


Christmas Making 


Secret of Gladness 


Cure for Care 


Secrets of Happy Home 


Face of the Master 


Life 


Gentle Heart 


Summer Gathering 


Girls ; Faults and Ideals 


To-day and To-morrow 


Glimpses of the Heavenly Transfigured Life 


Life 


Turning Northward 


How? When? Where? 


Unto the Hills 


In Perfect Peace 


Young Men ; Faults and 


Inner Life 


Ideals 


Loving my Neighbor 




THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 



Mefo\n% ti)e Mo»t 
of £ife* 



V E: M] 



BY 

ILLEE, D.D. 



AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," "THINGS TO LIVE FOR," 

"BUILDING OF CHARACTER," "THE GOLDEN 

GATE OF PRAYER," ETC. 



" I am the Lord thy God 
Which teacheth to profit." 

Isaiah. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO, 
PUBLISHERS 
\ 9MA 






Copyright, 1891, by T. Y. Crowell & Co. 



THIBTY-FIRST THOUSAND 



\ 

V, 



A WORD OF INTRODUCTION. 



Alexander was accustomed to say : " Philip of 
Macedon gave me life, but it was Aristotle who taught 
me how to make the most of life." 

To have the gift of life is a solemn thing. Life is 
God's most sacred trust. It is not ours to do with 
as we please ; it must be accounted for, every particle, 
every power, every possibility of it. 

These chapters are written with the purpose and 
hope of stimulating those who may read them to ear- 
nest and worthy living. If they seem urgent, if they 
present continually motives of thoughtfulness, if they 
dwell almost exclusively on the side of obligation and 
responsibility, if they make duty ever prominent and 
call to self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, leaving small 
space for play, it is because life itself is really most 
serious, and because we must meet it seriously, recog- 
nizing its sacred meaning and girding ourselves for it 
with all earnestness and energy. 

iii 



IV INTR OD UCTION. 

If this book shall teach any how to make the most 

of the life God has entrusted to them, that will be 

reward enough for the work of its preparation. To 

this service it is affectionately dedicated, in the name 

of Him who made the most of his blessed life by 

losing it in love's sacrifice, and who calls us also to die 

to self that we may live unto God. 

J, R. M. 

Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER fAGB 

I. Making the Most of Life . . . . . i 

IJ. Laid on God's Altar 12 

III. Christ's Interest in our Common Life . . 24 

IV. The Possibilities of Prayer 35 

V. Getting Christ's Touch 46 

VI. The Blessing of a Burden 57 

VII. Heart-peace before Ministry 72 

VIII. Moral Curvatures 82 

IX. Transfigured Lives 93 

X. The Interpretation of Sorrow 102 

XL Other People 115 

XII. The Blessing of Faithfulness . . . . . 126 

XIII. Without Axe or Hammer 135 

XIV. Doing Things for Christ 145 

XV. Helping and Over-helping 155 

XVI. The Only One 164 

XVII. Swiftness in Duty 176 

XVIII. The Shadows we Cast 186 

v 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. The Meaning of Opportunities 196 

XX. The Sin of Ingratitude 207 

XXI. Some Secrets of Happy Home Life . . . 220 

XXII. God's Winter Plants 231 

XXIII. Unfinished Life-building 240 

XXIV. Iron Shoes for Rough Roads .... 252 
XXV. The Shutting of Doors ....'.. 254 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE, 



CHAPTER I. 

MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

" Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; 
Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth ; 
For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice, 
And whoso suffers most hath most to give." 

— The Disciples* 

According to our Lord's teaching, we can 
make the most of our life by losing it. He 
says that losing the life for his sake is saving it. 
There is a lower self that must be trampled 
down and trampled to death by the higher self. 
The alabaster vase must be broken, that the 
ointment may flow out to fill the house. The 
grapes must be crushed, that there may be wine 
to drink. The wheat must be bruised, before 
it can become bread to feed hunger. 

It is so in life. Whole, unbruised, unbroken 
men are of but little use. True living is really 



2 MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

a succession of battles, in which the better tri- 
umphs over the worse, the spirit over the flesh. 
Until we cease to live for self, we have not 
begun to live at all. 

We can never become truly useful and helpful 
to others until we have learned this lesson. 
One may live for self and yet do many pleasant 
things for others ; but one's life can never be- 
come the great blessing to the world it was 
meant to be until the law of self-sacrifice has 
become its heart principle. 

A great oak stands in the forest. It is beau- 
tiful in its majesty ; it is ornamental ; it casts a 
pleasant shade. Under its branches the children 
play : among its boughs the birds sing. One 
day the woodman comes with his axe, and the 
tree quivers in all its branches, under his sturdy 
blows. " I am being destroyed," it cries. So 
it seems, as the great tree crashes down to 
the ground. And the children are sad because 
they can play no more beneath the broad 
branches ; the birds grieve because they can no 
more nest and sing amid the summer foliage. 

But let us follow the tree's history. It is cut 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 3 

into boards, and built into a beautiful cottage, 
where human hearts find their happy nest. Or 
it is used in making a great organ which leads 
the worship of a congregation. The losing of 
its life was the saving of it. It died that it 
might become deeply, truly useful. 

The plates, cups, dishes, and vases which we 
use in our homes and on our tables, once lay as 
common clay in the earth, quiet and restful, but 
in no way doing good, serving man. Then 
came men with picks, and the clay was rudely 
torn out and plunged into a mortar and beaten 
and ground in a mill, then pressed, and then 
put into a furnace, and burned and burned, at 
last coming forth in beauty, and beginning its 
history of usefulness. It was apparently de- 
stroyed that it might begin to be of service. 

A great church-building is going up, and the 
stones that are being laid on the walls are 
brought out of the dark quarry for this purpose. 
We can imagine them complaining, groaning, 
and repining, as the quarrymen's drills and 
hammers struck them. They supposed they 
were being destroyed as they were torn out 



4 MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

from the bed of rock where they had lain undis- 
turbed for ages, and were cut into blocks, and 
lifted out, and then as they were chiselled and 
dressed into form. But they were being de- 
stroyed only that they might become useful. 
They become part of a new sanctuary, in which 
God is to be worshipped, where the Gospel will 
be preached, where penitent sinners will find 
the Christ-Saviour, where sorrowing ones will 
be comforted. Surely it was better that these 
stones should be torn out, even amid agony, 
and built into the wall of the church, than that 
they should have lain ages more, undisturbed in 
the dark quarry. They were saved from use- 
lessness by being destroyed. 

These are simple illustrations of the law which 
applies also in human life. We must die to be 
useful — to be truly a blessing. Our Lord put 
this truth in a little parable, when he said that 
the seed must fall into the earth and die that it 
may bear fruit. Christ's own cross is the high- 
est illustration of this. His friends said he 
wasted his precious life ; but was that life 
wasted when Jesus was crucified? George 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 5 

MacDonald in one of his little poems, with Jeep 
spiritual insight, presents this truth of the 
blessed gain of Christ's life through his sacrifice 
and death : — 

" For three and thirty years, a living seed, 

A lonely germ, dropt on our waste world's side, 

Thy death and rising, thou didst calmly bide ; 
Sore compassed by many a clinging weed 
Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need ; 

Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied ; 

Pitied of goodness dull, and scorned of pride ; 
Until at length was done the awful deed, 
And thou didst lie outworn in stony bower — 

Three days asleep — oh, slumber godlike, brief; 

For Man of sorrows and acquaint with grief, 
Heaven's seed, Thou diedst, that out of thee might 
tower 

Aloft, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf 
Of all Humanity the crimson flower." 

People said that Harriet Newell's beautiful 
life was wasted when she gave it to missions, 
and J \en died and was buried far from home — 
bride, missionary, mother, saint, all in one short 
year, — without even telling to one heathen 
woman or child the story of the Saviour. But 



6 MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

was that lovely young life indeed wasted? No; 
all this century her name has been one of the 
strongest inspirations to missionary work, and 
her influence has brooded everywhere, touch- 
ing thousands of hearts of gentle women and 
strong men, as the story of her consecration 
has been told. Had Harriet Newell lived a 
thousand years of quiet, sweet life at home, she 
could not have done the work that she did in 
one short year by giving her life, as it seemed, 
an unavailing sacrifice. She lost her life that 
she might save it. She died that she might 
live. She offered herself a living sacrifice that 
she might become useful. 

In heart and spirit we must all do the same if 
we would ever be a real blessing in the world. 
We must be willing to lose our life— tc sacrifice 
ourself, to give up our own way, our own ease, 
our own comfort, possibly even our own life- 
for there come times when one's life must liter- 
ally be lost in order to be saved. 

It was in a mine in England. There had 
been a fearful explosion, and the men came 
rushing up from the lower level, right into 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. Jj 

the danger of the deathly afterblast ; when the 
only chance of safety was in another shaft. 
And one man knew this and stood there in the 
dangerous passage, warning the men. When 
urged to go himself the safe way, he said, 
" No ; some one must stay here to guide the 
others." Is there any heroism of this world'? 
life finer than that ? 

It was at Fredericksburg, after a bloody bat- 
tle. Hundreds of Union soldiers lay wounded 
on the field. All night and all next day the 
space was swept by artillery from both armies, 
and no one could venture to the sufferers' 
relief. All that time, too, there went up from 
the field agonizing cries for water, but there 
was no response save the roar of the guns. At 
length, however, one brave *ellow behind the 
ramparts, a Southern soldier, felt that he could 
endure these piteous cries no longer. His 
compassion rose superior to his love of 
life. 

"General," said Richard Kirkland to his com- 
mander, " I can't stand this. Those poor souls 
out there have been praying for water all night 



8 MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

and all day, and it is more than I can bear. I 
ask permission to carry them water." 

The general assured him that it would be 
instant death for him to appear upon the field, 
but he begged so earnestly that the officer, 
admiring his noble devotion to humanity, could 
not refuse his request. Provided with a sup- 
ply of water, the brave soldier stepped over the 
wall and went on his Christ-like errand. From 
both sides wondering eyes looked on as he 
knelt by the nearest sufferer, and gently raising 
his head, held the cooling cup to his parched 
lips. At once the Union soldiers understood 
what the soldier in gray was doing for their 
own wounded comrades, and not a shot was 
fired. For an hour and a half he continued his 
work, giving drink to the thirsty, straightening 
cramped and mangled limbs, pillowing men's 
heads on their knapsacks, and spreading blank- 
ets and army coats over them, tenderly as a 
mother would cover her child ; and all the 
while, until this angel-ministry was finished, 
the fusillade of death was hushed. 

Again we must admire the heroism that led 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 9 

this brave soldier in gray so utterly to forget 
himself for the sake of doing a deed of mercy to 
his enemies. There is more grandeur in five 
minutes of such self-renunciation than in a 
whole lifetime of self-interest and self-seeking. 
There is something Christly in it. How poor, 
paltry, and mean, alongside the records of such 
deeds, appear men's selfish strivings, self- 
interests' boldest venturings ! 

We must get the same spirit in us if we 
would become in any large and true sense a 
blessing to the world. We must die to live. 
We must lose our life to save it. We must lay 
self on the altar to be consumed in the fire of 
love, in order to glorify God and do good to 
men. Our work may be fair, even though 
mingled with self; but it is only when self is 
sacrificed, burned on the altar of consecration, 
consumed in the hot flames of love, that our 
work becomes really our best, a fit offering to 
be made to our King. 

We must not fear that in such sacrifice, such 
renunciation and annihilation of self, we shall 
lose ourselves. God will remember every deed 



IO MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

of love, every forgetting of self, every empty- 
ing out of life. Though we work in obscurest 
places, where no human tongue shall ever voice 
our praise, still there is a record kept, and some 
day rich and glorious reward will be given. Is 
not God's praise better than man's ? 

"Ungathered beauties of a bounteous earth, 

Wild flowers which grow on mountain-paths untrocL 
White water-lilies looking up to God 

From solitary tarns — and human worth 

Doing meek duty that no glory gains, 
Heroic souls in secret places sown, 
To live, to suffer, and to die unknown — 

Are not that loveliness and all these pains 

Wasted? Alas, then does it not suffice 
That God is on the mountain, by the lake, 
And in each simple duty, for whose sake 

His children give their very blood as price? 

The Father sees. If this does not repay, 

What else? For plucked flowers fade and praises slay." 

Mary's ointment was wasted when she broke 
the vase and poured it upon her Lord. Yes ; 
but suppose she had left the ointment in the 
unbroken vase? What remembrance would it 
then have had ? Would there have been any 



MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. II 

mention of it on the Gospel pages ? Would her 
deed of careful keeping have been told over all 
the world? She broke the vase and poured it 
out, lost it, sacrificed it, and now the perfume 
fills all the earth. We may keep our life if we 
will, carefully preserving it from waste ; but we 
shall have no reward, no honor from it, at the 
last. But if we empty it out in loving service, 
we shall make it a lasting blessing to the world, 
and we shall be remembered forever. 



CHAPTER II. 

LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 

c My life is not my own, but Christ's, who gave it. 

And he bestows it upon all the race; 
I lose it for his sake, and thus I save it; 
I hold it close, but only to expend it; 

Accept it, Lord, for others, through thy grace." 

We have to die to live. That is the central 
law of life. We must burn to give light to the 
world, or to give forth odor of incense to God's 
praise. We cannot save ourselves and at the 
same time make anything worthy of our life, or 
be in any deep and true sense an honor to God 
and a blessing to the world. The altar stands 
in the foreground of every life, and can be 
passed by only at the cost of all that is noblest 
and best. 

All the practical side of religion is summed 
up in the exhortation of St. Paul, that we pre- 
sent our bodies a living sacrifice to God. 
12 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 1 3 

Anciently, a man brought a lamb and pre- 
sented it to God, laid it on the altar, to be 
consumed by God's fire. In like manner, we 
are to present our bodies. The first thing is 
not to be a worker, a preacher, a saver of 
souls ; the very first thing in a Christian life 
is to present one's self to God, to lay one's 
self on the altar. We need to understand this. 
It is easier to talk and work for Christ than to 
give ourselves to him. It is easier to offer 
God a few activities than to give him a heart. 
But the heart must be first, else even the 
largest gifts and services are not acceptable. 

" 'Tis not thy work the Master needs, but thee, — - 
The obedient spirit, the believing heart." 

"A living sacrifice." A sacrifice is some- 
thing really given to God, to be his altogether 
and forever. We cannot take it back any more. 
One could not lay a lamb on God's altar and 
then a minute or two afterward run up and take 
it off. We cannot be God's to-day and our own 
to-morrow. If we become his at all, in a sacri- 
fice which he accepts, we are his always. 



14 LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 

How can we present ourselves as a sacrifice 
to God? By the complete surrender of our 
heart and will and all our powers to him. 
Absolute obedience is consecration. The 
soldier learns it. He is not his own. He 
does not think for himself, to make his own 
plans ; he has but one duty — to obey. Pay- 
son used to talk of his "lost will" — lost in 
God's will, he meant. That is what presenting 
one's self a sacrifice means. 

It is a "living" sacrifice. Anciently, the 
sacrifices were killed ; they were laid dead on 
the altar. We are to present ourselves living. 
The fire consumed the ancient offering; the 
fire of God's love and of his Spirit consumes 
our lives by purifying them and filling them 
with divine life. Those on whom the fire fell 
on the day of Pentecost became new men. 
There was a new life in their souls, a new 
ardor, a new enthusiasm. They were on fire 
with love for Christ. They entered upon a 
service in which all their energies flamed. 

The living sacrifice includes all the life, — 
not what it is now only, but all that it may 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 15 

become. Life is not a diamond, but a seed, 
with possibilities of endless growth. Dr. Ly- 
man Abbott has used this illustration : " I 
pluck an acorn from the greensward, and hold 
it to my ear ; and this is what it says to me : 
1 By and by the birds will come and nest in me. 
By and by I will furnish shade for the cattle. 
By and by I will provide warmth for the home 
in the pleasant fire. By and by I will be 
shelter from the storm to those who have gone 
under the roof. By and by I will be the strong 
ribs of the great vessel, and the tempest will 
beat against me in vain, while I carry men 
across the Atlantic* 'O foolish little acorn, 
wilt thou be all this ? ' I ask. And the acorn 
answers, 'Yes; God and I.'" 

I look into the faces of a company of chil- 
dren, and I hear a whisper, saying : " By and 
by I will be a great blessing to many. By 
and by other lives will come and find nest and 
home in me. By and by the weary will sit in 
the shadow of my strength. By and by I will 
sit as comforter in a home of sorrow. By and 
by I will speak the words of Christ's salvation 



1 6 LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 

in ears of lost ones. By and by I will shine in 
the full radiancy of the beauty of Christ, and 
be among the glorified with my Redeemer/' 
"You, frail, powerless, little one ? " I ask; and 
the answer is, "Yes; Christ and I." And all 
these blessed possibilities that are in the life 
of the young person must go upon the altar in 
the living sacrifice. 

Take another view of it. Some people seem 
to suppose that only spiritual exercises are 
included in this living sacrifice ; that it does 
not cover their business, their social life, their 
amusements. But it really embraces the whole 
of life. We belong to God as truly on Monday 
as on the Lord's Day. We must keep our- 
selves laid on God's altar as really while we 
are at our week-day work as when we are in a 
prayer-meeting. We are always on duty as 
Christians, whether we are engaged in our 
secular pursuits or in exercises of devotion. 
All our work should therefore be done rever- 
ently, "as unto the Lord." 

We should do everything also for God's eye 
and according to the principles of righteous- 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. If 

n ess. The consecrated mechanic must put 
absolute truth into every piece of work he 
does. The consecrated business man must 
conduct his business on the principles of divine 
righteousness. The consecrated millionaire 
must get his money on God's altar, so that 
every dollar of it shall do business for God, 
blessing the world. The consecrated house- 
keeper must keep her home so sweet and so 
tidy and beautiful all the days, that she would 
never be ashamed for her Master to come in 
without warning to be her guest. That is, 
when we present ourselves to God as a living 
sacrifice, we are to be God's in every part and 
in every phase of our life, wherever we go, 
whatever we do. 

" I cannot be of any use," says one. "I can- 
not talk in meetings. I cannot pray in public. 
I have no gift for visiting the sick. There is 
nothing I can do for Christ." 

Well, if Christian service were all talking and 
praying in meetings, and visiting the sick, it 
would be discouraging to such talentless people. 
But are our tongues the only faculties we can 



1 8 LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR, 

use for Christ ? There are ways in which even 
silent people can belong to God and be a bless- 
ing in the world. A star does not talk, but its 
calm, steady beam shines down continually out 
of the sky, and is a benediction to many. A 
flower cannot sing bird-songs, but its sweet 
beauty and gentle fragrance make it a blessing 
wherever it is seen. Be like a star in your 
peaceful shining, and many will thank God for 
your life. Be like the flower in your pure 
beauty and in the influence of your unselfish 
spirit, and you may do more to bless the world 
than many who talk incessantly. The living 
sacrifice does not always mean active work. It 
may mean the patient endurance of a wrong, the 
quiet bearing of a pain, cheerful acquiescence 
in a disappointment. 

" Noble deeds are held in honor; 
But the wide world sadly needs 
Hearts of patience to unravel 
The worth of common deeds." 

There are some people who think it impossi- 
ble in their narrow sphere and in their uncon- 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. ig 

genial circumstances to live so as to win God's 
favor or be blessings in the world. But there 
is no doubt that many of the most beautiful 
lives of earth, in Heaven's sight, are those that 
are lived in what seem the most unfavorable 
conditions. A visitor to Amsterdam wished to 
hear the wonderful music of the chimes of St. 
Nicholas, and went up into the tower of the 
church to hear it. There he found a man with 
wooden gloves on his hands, pounding on a 
keyboard. All he could hear was the clanging 
of the keys when struck by the wooden gloves, 
and the harsh, deafening noise of the bells 
close over his head. He wondered why people 
talked of the marvellous chimes of St. Nicholas. 
To his ear there was no music in them, noth- 
ing but terrible clatter and clanging. Yet, all 
the while, there floated out over and beyond the 
city the most entrancing music. Men in the 
fields paused in their work to listen and were 
made glad. People in their homes and trav- 
ellers on the highways were thrilled by the 
marvellous bell-notes that fell from the chimes. 
There are many lives which to those who 



20 LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 

dwell close beside them seem to make no 
music. They pour out their strength in hard 
toil. They are shut up in narrow spheres. 
They dwell amid the noise and clatter of com- 
mon task-work. They appear to be only strik- 
ing wooden hammers on rattling, noisy keys. 
There can be nothing pleasing to God in their 
life, men would say. They think themselves 
that they are not of any use, that no blessing 
goes out from their life. They never dream 
that sweet music is made anywhere in the 
world by their noisy hammering. As the bell- 
chimer in his little tower hears no music from 
his own ringing of the bells, so they think of 
their hard toil as producing nothing but clatter 
and clangor ; but out over the world where the 
influence goes from their work and character, 
human lives are blessed, and weary ones hear 
with gladness sweet, comforting music. Then 
away off in heaven, where angels listen for 
earth's melody, most entrancing strains are 
heard. 

No doubt it will be seen at the last that 
many of earth's most acceptable living sacri- 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 21 

fices have been laid on the altar in the nar- 
rowest spheres and in the midst of the hardest 
conditions. What to the ears of close listeners 
is only the noise of painful toil is heard in 
heaven as music sweet as angels' song. 

The living sacrifice is " acceptable unto God." 
It ought to be a wondrous inspiration to know 
this, that even the lowliest things we do for 
Christ are pleasing to him. We ought to be 
able to do better, truer work, when we think of 
his gracious acceptance of it. It is told of 
Leonardo da Vinci, that while still a pupil, be- 
fore his genius burst into brilliancy, he received 
a special inspiration in this way : His old and 
famous master, because of his growing infirmi- 
ties of age, felt obliged to give up his own work, 
and one day bade Da Vinci finish for him a pic- 
ture which he had begun. The young man had 
such a reverence for his master's skill that he 
shrank from the task. The old artist, however, 
would not accept any excuse, but persisted in 
his command, saying simply, " Do your best." 

Da Vinci at last tremblingly seized the brush 
and kneeling before the easel prayed : " It is for 



22 LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 

the sake of my beloved master that I implore 
skill and power for this undertaking." As he 
proceeded, his hand grew steady, his eye awoke 
with slumbering genius. He forgot himself and 
was filled with enthusiasm for his work. When 
the painting was finished, the old master was 
carried into the studio to pass judgment on the 
result. His eye rested on a triumph of art. 
Throwing his arms about the young artist, he 
exclaimed, " My son, I paint no more." 

There are some who shrink from undertaking 
the work which the Master gives them to do. 
They are not worthy ; they have no skill or 
power for the delicate duty. But to all their 
timid shrinking and withdrawing, the Master's 
gentle yet urgent word is, "Do your best." 
They have only to kneel in lowly reverence and 
pray, for the beloved Master's sake, for skill and 
strength for the task assigned, and they will be 
inspired and helped to do it well. The power of 
Christ will rest upon them and the love of 
Christ will be in their heart. And all work 
done under this blessed inspiration will be ac- 
ceptable unto God. We have but truly to lay 



LAID ON GOD'S ALTAR. 2$ 

the living sacrifice on the altar ; then God will 
send the fire. 

We need to get this matter of consecration 
down out of cloud-land into the region of actual, 
common daily living. We sing about it and 
pray for it and talk of it in our religious meet- 
ings, ofttimes in glowing mood, as if it were 
some exalted state with which earth's life of 
toil, struggle, and care had nothing whatever to 
do. But the consecration suggested by the liv- 
ing sacrifice is one that walks on the earth, that 
meets life's actual duties, struggles, temptations, 
and sorrows, and that falters not in obedience, 
fidelity, or submission, but follows Christ with 
love and joy wherever he leads. No other con- 
secration pleases God. 



CHAPTER III. 

CHRIST'S INTEREST IN OUR COMMON LIFE. 

" So still, dear Lord, in every place 

Thou standest by the toiling folk 
With love and pity in thy face, 
And givest of thy help and grace 

To those who meekly bear the yoke." 

One of our Lord's after-resurrection appear- 
ances vividly pictures his loving interest in our 
common toil While waiting for him to come 
to Galilee, the disciples had gone back for a 
time to their old work of fishing. They were 
poor men, and this was probably necessary in 
order to provide for their own subsistence. 
Thus fishing was the duty that lay nearest. 
Yet it must have been dreary work for them 
after the exalted privileges they had enjoyed so 
long. Think what the last three years had 
been to these men. Jesus had taken them into 
the most intimate fellowship with himself — 
24 



CHRIST'S INTEREST. 



25 



into closest confidential friendship. They had 
listened to his wonderful words, seen his gra- 
cious acts, and witnessed his sweet life. Think 
what a privilege it was to live thus with Jesus 
those beautiful years ; what glimpses of heaven 
they had ; what visions of radiant life shone be- 
fore them. 

But now this precious experience was ended. 
The lovely dream had vanished. They were 
back again at their old work. How dreary it 
must have been — this tiresome handling of 
oars and boats and fishing-nets, after their years 
of exalted life with their Master! But it is a 
precious thought to us that just at this time, 
when they were in the midst of the dull and 
wearisome work, and when they were sadly dis- 
couraged, Christ appeared to them. It showed 
his interest in their work, his sympathy with 
them in their discouragement, and his readiness 
to help them. 

Then the revealings of his appearance that 
morning are for all his friends and for all time. 
We know now that our risen Saviour is inter- 
ested in whatever we have to do, and is ready 



26 CHRIST'S INTEREST 

to help us in all our dull, common life. He will 
come to his people, not in the church service, 
the prayer-meeting, the Holy Supper only, but 
is quite as apt to reveal himself to them in the 
task-work of the plainest, dullest day. Susan 
Coolidge writes : — 

" That thy full glory may abound, increase, 
And so thy likeness shall be formed in me, 
I pray ; the answer is not rest or peace, 
But changes, duties, wants, anxieties, 

Till there seems room for everything but thee, 
And never time for anything but these. 

" And I should fear, but lo ! amid the press, 
The whirl and hum and pressure of my day, 
I hear thy garments sweep, thy seamless dress, 
And close beside my work and weariness 

Discern thy gracious form, not far away, 
But very near, O Lord, to help and bless. 

" The busy fingers fly ; the eyes may see 

Only the glancing needle which they hold ; 
But all my life is blossoming inwardly, 
And every breath is like a litany ; 

While through each labor, like a thread of gold, 
Is woven the sweet consciousness of thee." 



IN OUR COMMON LIFE. 27 

There are duties in every life that are irk- 
some. Young people sometimes find school 
work dull. There are faithful mothers who 
many a day grow weary of the endless duties of 
the household. There are good men who tire 
ofttimes of the routine of office, or store, or 
mill, or farm. There comes to most of us, at 
times, the feeling that what we have to do day 
after day is not worthy of us. We have had 
glimpses, or brief experiences, of life in its 
higher revealings. It may have been a compan- 
ionship for a season with one above us in expe- 
rience or attainment, that has lifted us up for a 
little time into exalted thoughts and feelings, 
after which it is hard to come back again to the 
old plodding round, and to the old, uninterest- 
ing companionships. It may .have been a visit 
to some place or to some home, with opportuni- 
ties, refinements, inspirations, privileges, above 
those which we can have in our own narrower 
surroundings and plainer home and less con- 
genial intimacies. 

Or our circumstances may have been rudely 
changed by some providence that has broken in 



28 CHRIST'S INTEREST 

upon our happy life. It may have been a death 
that cut off the income, or a reverse in business 
that swept away a fortune, and luxury and ease 
and the material refinements and elegances of 
wealth have to be exchanged for toil and plain 
circumstances and a humbler home. There are 
few sorer tests of character than such changes 
as these bring with them. The first thought 
always is : " How can I go to this dreary life, 
these hard tasks, this painful drudgery, this 
weary plodding, after having enjoyed so long 
the comforts and refinements of my old happy 
state ? " 

In such cases immeasurable comfort may be 
found in this appearance of the risen Christ 
that morning on the shore. The disciples took 
up their dull old work because it was necessary, 
and was their plain duty for the time ; and 
there was Jesus waiting to greet them and 
bless them. Accept your hard tasks, and do 
them cheerfully, no matter how irksome they 
appear, and Christ will reveal himself to you 
in them. Be sure that he will never come to 
you when you are avoiding any tasks, when 



IN OUR COMMON LIFE. 29 

you are withholding your hand from any duty, 
or when you are fretting and discontented over 
any circumstances or conditions of your lot. 
There are no visions of the Christ for idle 
dreamers or for unhapppy shirkers. 

Suppose you have come back, like the dis- 
ciples, from times of privilege and exaltation, 
and find yourself face to face once more with 
an old life which seems now unworthy of you ; 
yet for the time your duty is clear, and if you 
would have a vision of Christ, you must take 
up the duty with gladness. Suppose that 
your home-life is narrow, humdrum, unpoetic, 
uncongenial, even cold and unkindly ; yet there 
for the time is your place, and there are your 
duties. And right in this sphere, narrow 
though it seem, there is room for holiest 
visions of Christ and for the richest revealings 
of his grace and blessing. 

It will be remembered that Jesus himself, 
after his glimpse of higher things in the temple, 
went back to the lowly peasant home at Naz- 
areth, and there for eighteen years more found 
scope enough for the development of the 



JO CHRIST'S INTEREST 

richest nature this world ever saw, and for the 
fullest and completest doing of duty ever 
wrought beneath the skies. Whatever, then, 
may be our shrinking from dull tasks, our dis- 
taste for dreary duty, our discontent with a 
narrow place and with limiting circumstances, 
we should go promptly to the work that God 
assigns, and accept the conditions that lie in 
the lot which he appoints. And in our hardest 
toil, our most irksome tasks, our lowliest duties, 
our dreariest and most uncongenial surround- 
ings, we shall have but to lift up our eyes to 
see the blessed form of Christ standing before 
us, with cheer, sympathy, and encouragement 
for us. 

There is more of the lesson. Not only did 
Christ reveal himself to these disciples while 
at their lowly work, but he helped them in it. 
He told them where to cast their net, and 
turned their failure to success. We think of 
Christ as helping us to endure temptation, to 
bear trial, to overcome sin, to do spiritual 
duties, but we sometimes forget that he is 
just as ready to help us in our common work. 



IN" OUR COMMON LIFE. 3 1 

That morning he helped the disciples in theii 
fishing. He will help us in our trade or busi- 
ness, or in whatever work we have to do. 

We all have our discouraged days, when 
things do not go well. The young people fail 
in their lessons at school, although they have 
studied hard, and really have done their best 
Or the mothers fail in their household work 
The children are hard to control. It has beer, 
impossible to keep good temper, to maintair 
that sweetness and lovingness that are so es 
sential to a happy day. They try to be gentle 
kindly, and patient, but, try as they will, theii 
minds become ruffled and fretted with cares. 
They come to the close of the long, unhappy 
hours disturbed, defeated, discouraged. They 
have done their best, but they feel that they 
have only failed. They fall upon their knees, 
but they have only tears for a prayer. Yet 
if they will lift up their eyes, they will see on 
the shore of the troubled sea of their little day's 
life the form of One whose presence will give 
them strength and confidence, and who will 
help them to victoriousness. Before his sweet 



32 CHRIST'S INTEREST 

smile the shadows flee away. At his word 
new strength is given, and, after that, work is 
easy, and all goes well again. 

Men, too, in their busy life, are continually 
called to struggle, ofttimes to suffer. Life is 
not easy for any who would live truly. Work 
is hard ; burdens are heavy ; responsibility is 
great ; trials are sore ; duty is large. Life's 
competitions are fierce ; its rivalries are keen ; 
its frictions sometimes grind men's very souls 
well nigh to death. It is hard to live sweetly 
amid the irritations that touch continually at 
most tender points. It is hard to live lovingly 
and charitably when they see so much inequity 
and wrong, and sometimes must themselves 
endure men's uncharity and injustice. It is 
hard to toil and never rest, earning even then 
scarce enough to feed and clothe those who are 
dependent on them for care. It is hard to 
meet temptation's fierce assaults, and keep 
themselves pure, unspotted from the world, 
ready for heaven any hour the Lord may 
come. 

It is no wonder that men are sometimes dis- 



IN OUR COMMON LIFE. 33 

couraged and lose heart. They are like those 
weary disciples that spring morning on the Sea 
of Galilee, after they had toiled all night and 
had taken nothing. But let us not forget the 
vision that awaited these disciples with the 
coming of the dawn — the risen Jesus standing 
on the shore with his salutation of love and his 
strong help that instantly turned failure into 
blessing. So over against every tempted, strug- 
gling, toiling life of Christian disciple, Christ is 
ever standing, ready to give victory and to guide 
to highest good. 

Life would be easier for us all if we could 
realize the presence and actual help of Christ in 
all our experiences. We need to care for only 
one thing — that we may be faithful always to 
duty, and loyal to our Master. Then, the duller 
the round and the sorer the struggle, the surer 
we shall ever be of Christ's smile and help. We 
may glory in infirmities, because then the power 
of God rests upon us. 

It is not ordinarily in the easy ways, in the 
luxurious surroundings, in the paths of worldly 
honor, in the congenial lot, that the brightest 



34 CHRIST'S INTEREST. 

heavenly visions are seen. There have been 
more blessed revealings of Christ in prisons 
than in palaces, in homes of poverty than in 
homes of abundance, in ways of hardship than 
in ways of ease. We need only to accept our 
task-work, our drudgery, our toil, in Christ's 
name, and the glory of Christ will transfigure it 
and shros upon our faces. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER. 

"Ask and receive — 'tis sweetly said; 
Yet what to plead for know I not, 
For wish is worsted, hope o'ersped, 
And aye to thanks returns my thought. 
If I would pray 
I've naught to say, 
But this, that God may be God still: 
For time to live 
So still to give, 
And sweeter than my wish his will." 

— David A. Wasson. 

We do not begin to realize the possibilities of 
prayer. There is no limit, for example, to the 
scope of prayer. We may embrace in it all 
things that belong to our life, not merely those 
which affect our spiritual interests, but those as 
well which seem to be only worldly matters. 
Nothing that concerns us in any way is matter 
of indifference to God. One writes : " Learn 
to entwine with your prayers the small cares, 

35 



36 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PR A YER. 

the trifling sorrows, the little wants of daily life. 
Whatever affects you, — be it a changed look, an 
altered tone, an unkind word, a wrong, a wound, 
a demand you cannot meet, a sorrow you cannot 
disclose, — turn it into prayer and send it up to 
God. Disclosures you may not make to man, 
you can make to the Lord. Men may be too 
little for your great matters ; God is not too 
great for your small ones. Only give yourself 
to prayer, whatever be the occasion that calls 
for it." 

We soon find, however, if we are really ear- 
nest, that our desires are too great for words. 
We have in our hearts feelings, hungerings, 
affections, longings, which we want to breathe 
out to God ; but when we begin to speak to him, 
we find no language adequate for their expres- 
sion. We try to tell God of our sorrow for sin, 
of our weakness and sinfulness, then of our de- 
sire to be better, to love Christ more, to follow 
him more closely, and of our hunger after 
righteousness, after holiness ; but it is very little 
of these deep cravings that we can get into 
speech. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRA YEP. 37 

Language is a wonderful gift. The power of 
putting into words the thoughts and emotions 
of our souls, that others may understand them, 
is one of the most marvellous powers the Crea- 
tor has bestowed upon us. Thus we communi- 
cate our feelings and desires the one to the 
other. It is a sore deprivation when the gates 
of speech are shut and locked, and when the 
soul cannot tell its thoughts. 

Yet we all know, unless our thoughts and 
feelings are very shallow and trivial, that even 
the wonderful faculty of language is inadequate 
to express all that the soul can experience. No 
true orator ever finds sentences majestic enough 
to interpret the sentiments that burn in his 
soul. Deep, pure love is never able to put into 
words its most sacred feelings and emotions. It 
is only the commonplace of the inner life that 
can be uttered in even the finest language. 
There is always more that lies back, unex- 
pressed, than is spoken in any words. 

It is specially true of prayer that we cannot 
utter its deepest feelings and holiest desires. 
We have comfort, however, in the assurance 



38 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRA YER. 

that God can hear thoughts. He knows what 
we want to say and cannot express. Your dear- 
est friend may stand close to you when your 
mind is full of thoughts, but unless you speak 
or give some sign, he cannot know one of your 
thoughts. He may lay his ear close to your 
heart, and he will hear its throbbings ; but he 
cannot hear your feelings, your desires. Yet 
God knows all that goes on in your soul. Every 
thought that flies through your brain is heard in 
heaven. 

"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, 
Thou understandest my thought afar off. 
Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, 
And art acquainted with all my ways. 
For there is not a word in my tongue, 
But, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether." 

We need not trouble ourselves, therefore, if 
we cannot get our wishes into words when we 
pray, for God hears wishes, heart-longings, sou? 
hungerings and thirstings. The things we can- 
not say in speech of the lips, we may ask God 
to take from our heart's speech- There is not 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PR A YER. 39 

the feeblest, faintest glimmer of a desire rising 
on the far-away horizon of our being, but God 
sees it. There is not a heart-hunger, not a wish 
to be holier and better, not an aspiration to be 
more Christ-like, not a craving to live for God 
and be a blessing to others, not the faintest 
desire to be rid of sin's power, but God knows 
of it. St. Paul has a wonderful word on this 
subject : God, he says, "is able to do exceeding 
abundantly above all that we ask or think." 
When our heart is stirred to its depths, what 
large, great things can we ask in words ? Then, 
how much can we put into thoughts of prayer, 
into longings, desires, aspirations, beyond the 
possibilities of speech ? God can do more than 
we can pray either in words or thoughts. 

Our truest praying is that which we cannot 
express in any words, our heart's unutterable 
longings, when we sit at God's feet and look up 
into his face and do not speak at all, but let our 
hearts talk. 

-* Rather as friends sit sometimes hand in hand, 
Nor mar with words the sweet speech of their eyes; 
So in soft silence let us oftener bow, 



40 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PR A YEP. 

Nor try with words to make God understand. 

Longing is prayer ; upon its wings we rise 

To where the breath of heaven beats upon our brow." 

Our best, truest prayers are not for earthly- 
things, but for spiritual blessings. When the 
objects are temporal, we do not know what we 
should pray for — what would be really a bless- 
ing to us. You are a loving parent, and your 
child is very ill. It seems that it must die. 
You fall upon your knees before God to pray, 
but you do not know what to ask. Your break- 
ing heart would quickly plead, " Lord, spare my 
precious child " ; but you do not know that that 
is best. Perhaps to live would not be God's 
sweetest gift to your child, or to you. So, not 
daring to choose, you can only say, " Lord God, 
I cannot speak more ; but thou knowest thy 
child ; thou understandest what is best." 

Or, some plan of yours, which you have long 
cherished, seems about to be thwarted. You 
go to God, and begin to pray ; but you do not 
know what to ask. You can only say, " Lord, I 
cannot tell what is best; but thou knowest." 
What a comfort it is that God does indeed 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER. 41 

know, and that we may safely leave our heart's 
burden in his hand, without any request what- 
ever ! 

" Lord, I had chosen another lot, 
But then I had not chosen well ; 
Thy choice, and truly thine, was good; 

No different lot, search heaven or hell, 
Had blessed me, fully understood, 
None other which thou orderest not." 

We can do little more than this in any re- 
quest for temporal things. Says Archdeacon 
Farrar : " There are two things to remember 
about prayers for earthly things : One, that to 
ask mainly for earthly blessings is a dreadful 
dwarfing and vulgarization of the grandeur of 
prayer, as though you asked for a handful of 
grass, when you might ask for a handful of em- 
eralds ; the other that you nu.st always ask for 
earthly desires with absolute submission of 
your own will to God's/ 1 So silence is oft- 
times the best and truest praying — bowing 
before God in life's great crises ; but saying 
nothing, leaving the burden in God's hand with- 
out any choosing. We are always safe when 
we let God guide us in all our ways. 



42 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER. 

" 111 that he blesses is our good, 
And unblest good is ill ; 
And all is right that seems most wrong, 
If it be his sweet will." 

Many of the richest possibilities of prayer lie 
beyond valleys of pain and sorrow. The best 
things of life cannot be gotten save at sore cost. 
When we pray for more holiness, we do not 
know what we are asking for; at least we do 
not know the price we must pay to get that 
which we ask. Our "Nearer, my God, to 
thee," must be conditioned by, and often can 
come only through, 

"E'en though it be a cross, 
That raiseth me." 

Not only are the spiritual things the best 
things, but many times the spiritual things can 
be grasped only by letting go and losing out of 
our hands the earthly things we would love to 
keep. God loves us too much to grant our 
prayers for comfort and relief, even when we 
make them, if he can do it only at spiritual loss 
to us. He would rather let it be hard for us 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PR A YEK. 43 

to live if there is blessing in the hardness, than 
make it easy for us at the cost of the blessing. 

There are certain singing-birds that never 
learn to sing until their cages are darkened. 
Would it be true kindness to keep these birds 
always in the sunshine ? There are human 
hearts that never learn to sing the song of faith 
and peace and love, until they enter the dark- 
ness of trial. Would it be true love for these 
if God would hear their prayers for the removal 
of their pain ? We dare not plead, therefore, 
save with utmost diffidence and submission, 
that God would remove the cross of suffering. 

" Thou canst not tell 
How rich a dowry sorrow gives the soul, 
How firm a faith and eagle-sight of God." 

Does God answer prayers ? " I have been 
praying for one thing for years," says one, "and 
it has not come yet." God has many ways of 
answering. Sometimes he delays that he may 
give a better, fuller answer. A poor woman 
stood at a vineyard gate, and looked over into 
the vineyard. " Would you like some grapes ? " 



44 THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER. 

asked the proprietor, who was within. "I 
should be very thankful," replied the woman. 
"Then bring your basket." Quickly the basket 
was brought to the gate and passed in. The 
owner took it and was gone a long time among 
the vines, till the woman became discouraged, 
thinking he was not coming again. At last he 
returned with the basket heaped full. " I have 
made you wait a good while," he said, " but you 
know the longer you have to wait, the better 
grapes and the more." 

So it sometimes is in prayer. We bring our 
empty vessel to God and pass it over the gate 
of prayer to him. He seems to be delaying a 
long time, and sometimes faith faints with wait- 
ing. But at last he comes, and our basket is 
heaped full with luscious blessings. He waited 
long that he might bring us a better and a 
fuller answer. At least we are sure that no 
true prayer ever really goes unanswered. We 
have to wait for the fruits to ripen, and that 
takes time. 

Then sometimes God delays until some work 
vn us is finished, some preparation which is 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRAYER. 45 

needed before the best answer can be received. 
The following words are suggestive : 

" Unanswered yet, the prayer your lips have pleaded 

In agony of heart these many years? 
Does faith begin to fail ? Is hope departing, 

And think you all in vain those falling tears ? 
Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer ; 
You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere. 

" Unanswered yet, though when you first presented 
This one petition at the Father's throne, 
It seemed you could not wait the time of asking, 

So urgent was your heart to have it known ? 
Though years have passed since then, do not despair \ 
The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere. 

" Unanswered yet ? Nay, do not say ungranted ; 
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done ; 
The work began when first your prayer was uttered. 

And God will finish what he has begun. 
If you w T ill keep the incense burning there, 
His glory you will see sometime, somewhere. 

" Unanswered yet ? Faith cannot be unanswered. 

Her feet are firmly planted on the rock ; 
Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted, 

Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock. 
She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer, 
And cries, It shall be done — sometime, somewhere." 



CHAPTER V. 

GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 

"This is life — to pour out love unstinted; 
Good and evil, sunlike, blesseth he; 
Through your finite is his infinite hinted — 
Children of your Father must ye be." 

— Lucy Larcom. 

There was wonderful power in the touch of 
Christ when he was on the earth. Wherever 
he laid his hand, he left a blessing, and sick, 
sad, and weary ones received health, comfort, 
and peace. That hand, glorified, now holds 
in its clasp the seven stars. Yet there are 
senses in which the blessed touch of Christ is 
felt yet on men's lives. He is as really in this 
world to-day as he was when he walked in 
human form through Judea and Galilee. His 
hand is yet laid on the weary, the suffering, 
the sorrowing, and, though its pressure is un- 
felt, its power to bless is the same as in the 
46 



GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 47 

ancient days. It is laid on the sick, when 
precious heavenly words of cheer and en- 
couragement from the Scriptures are read at 
their bedside, giving them the blessing of 
sweet patience, and quieting their fears. It 
is laid on the sorrowing, when the consolations 
of divine love come to their hearts with tender 
comfort, giving them strength to submit to 
God's will and rejoice in the midst of trial 
It is laid on the faint and weary, when the 
grace of Christ comes to them with its holy 
peace, hushing the wild tumult, and giving 
true rest of soul. 

But there is another way in which the hand 
of Christ is laid on human lives. He sends 
his disciples into the world to represent him. 
"As the Father hath sent me, even so send 
I you," is his own word. Of course the best 
and holiest Christian life can be only the 
dimmest, faintest reproduction of the rich, 
full, blessed life of Christ. Yet it is in this 
way, through these earthen vessels, that he 
has ordained to save the world, and to heal, 
help, comfort, lift up, and build up men. 



48 GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 

" In these earthen vessels heavenly treasure 

For the enrichment of thy poor may shine ; 
Thou canst fill us in our human measure 
With thy being's overflow divine." 

Perhaps in thinking of what God does foi 
the world, we are too apt to overlook the 
human agents and instruments, and to think 
of him touching lives directly and immediately. 
A friend of ours is in sorrow, and, going to 
our knees, we pray God to give him comfort. 
But may it not be that he would send the com- 
fort through our own heart and lips ? One we 
love is not doing well, is drifting away from 
a true life, is in danger of being lost. In 
anguish of heart we cry to God, beseeching 
him to lay his hand on the imperilled life, and 
rescue it. But may it not be that ours is the 
hand that must be stretched out in love, and 
laid, in Christ's name, on the life that is in 
danger ? 

Certain it is, at least, that each one of us 
who knows the love of Christ is ordained to 
be as Christ to others ; that is, to be the mes- 
senger to carry to them the gift of Christ's 



GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 49 

grace and help, and to show to them the spirit 
of Christ, the patience, gentleness, thoughtful- 
ness, love, and yearning of Christ. We are 
taught to say, "Christ liveth in me." If this 
be true, Christ would love others through us, 
and our touch must be to others as the very 
touch of Christ himself. Every Christian 
ought to be, in his human measure, a new 
incarnation of the Christ, so that people shall 
say: "He interprets Christ to me. He com- 
forts me in my sorrow as Christ himself would 
do if he were to come and sit down beside me. 
He is hopeful and patient as Christ would be 
if he were to return and take me as his dis- 
ciple." 

But before we can be in the place of Christ 
to sorrowing, suffering, and struggling ones, we 
must have the mind in us that was in him. 
When St. Paul said, "The love of Christ con- 
straineth me," he meant that he had the very 
love of Christ in him — the love that loved 
even the most unlovely, that helped even the 
most unworthy, that was gentle and affection- 
ate wsn to the most loathsome. We are never 



SO GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 

ready to do good in the world, in the truest 
sense or in any large measure, until we have 
become thus filled with the very spirit of 
Christ. We may help people in a certain way 
without loving them. We may render them 
services of a certain kind, benefiting them 
externally or temporally. We may put mate- 
rial gifts into their hands, build them houses, 
purchase clothing foi- them, carry them bread, 
or improve their circumstances and condition. 
We may thus do many things for them without 
having in our heart any love for them, any- 
thing better than common philanthropy. But 
the highest and most real help we can give 
them only through loving them. 

"When I have attempted," says Emerson, 
" to give myself to others by services, it proved 
an intellectual trick — no more. They eat 
your services like apples, and leave you out. 
But love them, and they feel you and delight in 
you all the time." When we love others we 
can help them in all deep and true ways. We 
can put blessings into their hearts instead of 
merely into their hands. We can enter into 



GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 5 1 

their very being, becoming new breath of life 
to them, — quickening, inspiration, impulse. 

"What is the best a friend can be 
To any soul, to you or me? 
Not only shelter, comfort, rest — 
Inmost refreshment unexpressed; 
Not only a beloved guide 
To thread life's labyrinth at our side, 
Or with love's torch lead on before ; 
Though these be much, there yet is more. 

"The best friend is an atmosphere 
Warm with all inspirations dear, 
Wherein we breathe the large, free breath 
Of life that hath no taint of death. 
Our friend is an unconscious part 
Of every true beat of our heart; 
A strength, a growth, whence we derive 
God's health, that keeps the world alive." 

There is a touching and very suggestive 
story of a good woman in Sweden, who opened 
a home for crippled and diseased children — 
children for whom no one else was ready to 
care. In due time she received into her home 
about twenty of these unfortunate little ones 



52 GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH, 

Among them was a boy of three years, who 
was a most frightful and disagreeable object 
He resembled a skeleton. His skin was 
covered with hideous blotches and sores. He 
was always whining and crying. This poor 
little fellow gave the good lady more care and 
trouble than all the others together. She did 
her best for him, and was as kind as possible — 
washed him, fed him, nursed him. But the 
child was so repulsive in his looks and ways, 
that, try as she would, she could not bring her- 
self to like him, and often her disgust would 
show itself in her face in spite of her effort to 
hide it. She could not really love the child. 

One day she was sitting on the veranda steps 
with this child in her arms. The sun was shin- 
ing brightly, and the perfume of the autumn 
honeysuckles, the chirping of the birds, and the 
buzzing of the insects, lulled her into a sort of 
sleep. Then in a half-waking, half-dreaming 
state, she thought of herself as having changed 
places with the child, and as lying there, only 
mote foul, more repulsive in her sinfulness than 
he was. 



GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 53 

Over her she saw the Lord Jesus bending, 
looking lovingly into her face, yet with an 
expression of gentle rebuke in his eye, as if 
he meant to say, " If I can bear with you who 
are so full of sin, surely you ought, for my sake, 
to love that innocent child who suffers for the 
sin of his parents." 

She woke up with a sudden start, and looked 
into the boy's face. He had waked, too, and 
was looking very earnestly into her face. 
Sorry for her past disgust, and feeling in her 
heart a new compassion for him, she bent her 
face to his, and kissed him as tenderly as ever 
she had kissed babe of her own. With a 
startled look in his eyes, and a flush on his 
cheek, the boy gave her back a smile so sweet 
that she had never seen one like it before. 
From that moment a wonderful change came 
over the child. He understood the new affec- 
tion that had come instead of dislike and loath- 
ing in the woman's heart. That touch of 
human love transformed his peevish, fretful 
nature into gentle quiet and beauty. The 
Woman had seen a vision of herself in that 



54 GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 

blotched, repulsive child, and of Christ's won- 
derful love for her in spite of her sinfulness. 
Under the inspiration of this vision she had 
become indeed as Christ to the child. The 
love of Christ had come into her heart, and 
was pouring through her upon that poor, 
wretched, wronged life. 

Christ loves the unlovely, the deformed, the 
loathsome, the leprous. We have only to think 
of ourselves as we are in his sight, and then 
remember that, in spite of all the moral and 
spiritual loathsomeness in us, he yet loves us, 
does not shrink from us, lays his hand upon 
us to heal us, takes us into most intimate 
companionship with himself. This Christian 
woman had seen a vision of herself, and of 
Christ loving her still and condescending to 
bless and save her ; and now she was ready to 
be as Christ, to show the spirit of Christ, to be 
the pity and the love of Christ to this poor, 
loathsome child lying on her knee. 

She had gotten the touch of Christ by get- 
ting the love of Christ in her heart. And 
we can get it in no other way. We must see 



GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 55 

ourselves as Christ's servants, sent by him to 
be to others what he is to us. Then shall we 
be fitted to be a blessing to every life which 
our life touches. Our words then shall throb 
with love, and find their way to the hearts of 
the weary and sorrowingo Then there will be a 
sympathetic quality in our life which shall give 
a strange power of helpfulness to whatever we 
do. 

Says a thoughtful writer, speaking of in- 
fluence : " Let a man press nearer to Christ, 
and open his nature more widely to admit the 
energy of Christ, and, whether he knows it 
or not, — it is better, perhaps, if he does not 
know it, — he will certainly be growing in power 
for God with men, and for men with God." 
We get power for Christ only as we become 
filled with the very life of Christ. 

Everywhere about us there are lives, cold, 
and cheerless, and dull, which by the touch of 
our hand, in loving warmth, in Christ's name, 
would be wondrously blessed and transformed. 
Some one tells of going into a jeweller's store 
to look at certain gems. Among other stones 



56 GETTING CHRIST'S TOUCH. 

he was shown an opal. As it lay there, how% 
ever, it appeared dull and altogether lustre* 
less. Then the jeweller took it in his hand 
and held it for some moments, and again 
showed it to his customer. Now it gleamed 
and flashed with all the glories of the rainbow. 
It needed the touch and warmth of a human 
hand to bring out its iridescence. There are 
human lives everywhere about us that are rich 
in their possibilities of beauty and glory. No 
gems or jewels are so precious ; but as we 
see them in their earthly condition they are 
dull and lustreless, without brightness or love- 
liness. Perhaps they are even covered with 
stain and defiled by sin. Yet they need only 
the touch of the hand of Christ to bring out 
the radiance, the loveliness, the beauty of the 
divine image in them. And you and I must 
be the hand of Christ to these lustreless or 
stained lives. Touching them with our warm 
love, the sleeping splendor that is in them, 
hidden mayhap under sin's marring and ruin, 
will yet shine out, the beginning of glory for 
them. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

6 Then welcome each reburr, 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand nor go. 
Be our joys three parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!" 

— Robert Browning. 

It is not always the easiest things that are 
the best things. Usually we have to pay for 
any good thing about its full value. In all mar- 
kets commodities that cost little may be set 
down as worth but little. All our blessings 
may be rated in the same way. If they come 
easily, without great cost of effort or sacrifice, 
their value to us is not great. But if we can 
get them only through self-denial, tears, anguish, 
and pain, we may be sure that they hide in them 
the very gold of God. So it is that many of our 
best and richest blessings come to us in some 
form of rugged hardness. 

57 



3 8 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

Take what we call drudgery. Life is full ol 
it. It begins in childhood. There is school, 
with its set hours, its lessons, rules, tables, 
tasks, recitations. Then, when we grow up, 
instead of getting away from this bondage of 
routine, this interminable drudgery, it goes on 
just as in childhood. It is rising at the same 
hour every morning, and hurrying away to the 
day's tasks, and doing the same things over and 
over, six days in the week, fifty-two weeks in 
the year, and on and on unto life's end. For 
the great majority of us, there is almost no 
break in the monotonous rounds of our days 
through the long years. Many of us sigh and 
wish we might in some way free ourselves from 
this endless routine. We think of it as a sore 
bondage and by no means the ideal of a noble 
and beautiful life. 

But really, much that is best in life comes out 
of this very bondage. A recent writer suggests 
a new beatitude : "Blessed be drudgery. ,, He 
reminds us that no Bible beatitude comes easily, 
but that every one of them is the fruit of some 
experience of hardness or pain. He shows us 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 59 

that life's drudgery, wearisome and disagreeable 
as it is, yields rich treasures of good and blessing. 
Drudgery, he tells us, is the secret of all cul- 
ture. He names as fundamentals in a strong, 
fine character, " power of attention ; power of 
industry ; promptitude in beginning work ; 
method, accuracy, and despatch in doing work ; 
perseverance ; courage before difficulties ; cheer 
under straining burdens ; self-control ; self-de- 
nial ; temperance " ; and claims that nowhere 
else can these qualities be gotten save in the un- 
ending grind and pressure of those routine duties 
which we call drudgery. "It is because we have 
to go, morning after morning, through rain, 
through shine, through headache, heartache, to 
the appointed spot and do the appointed work ; 
because, and only because, we have to stick to 
that work through the eight or ten hours, long 
after rest would be so sweet ; because the 
school-boy's lessons must be learned at nine 
o'clock, and learned without a slip ; because 
the accounts on the ledger must square to a 
cent ; because the goods must tally exactly 
with the invoice ; because good temper must 



60 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN 

be kept with children, customers, neighbors, 
not seven times, but seventy times seven ; 
because the besetting sin must be watched to- 
day, to-morrow, next day ; in short, ... it is 
because, and only because, of the rut, plod, 
grind, hum-drum in the work, that we get at 
last those self-foundations laid," which are 
essential to all noble character. 

So there is a blessing for us in the com- 
monest, wearisomest task-work of our lives. 
" Blessed be drudgery " is truly a beatitude. 
We all need the discipline of this tireless plod- 
ding to build us up into beautiful character. 
Even the loveliest flowers must have their roots 
in common earth ; so, many of the sweetest 
things in human lives grow out of the soil of 
drudgery. " Be thou, O man, like unto the 
rose. Its root is indeed in dirt and mud, but 
its flowers still send forth grace and perfume." 

Take again life's struggles and conflicts. 
There are, in the experience of each one, 
obstacles, hindrances, and difficulties, which 
make it hard to live successfully. Every one 
has to move onward and upward through ranks 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 6 1 

of resistances. This is true of physical life. 
Every baby that is born begins at once a strug- 
gle for existence. To be victorious and live, or 
to succumb and die ? is the question of every 
cradle, and only half the babies born reach 
their teens. After that, until its close, life is a 
continuous struggle with the manifold forms of 
physical infirmity. If we live to be old it must 
be through our victoriousness over the unceas- 
ing antagonism of accident and disease. 

The same is true in mental progress. It 
must be made against resistance. It is never 
easy to become a scholar or to attain intellec- 
tual culture. It takes years and years of study 
and discipline to draw out and train the facul- 
ties of the mind. An indolent, self-indulgent 
student may have an easy time ; he never trou- 
bles himself with difficult problems ; he lets the 
hard things pass, not vexing his brain with 
them. But in evading the burden he misses 
the blessing that was in it for him. The only 
path to the joys and rewards of scholarship is 
that of patient, persistent toil. 

It is true also in spiritual life. We enter a 



62 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

world of antagonism and opposition the moment 
we resolve at Christ's feet to be Christians, tc 
be true men or women, to forsake sin, to obey 
God, to do our duty. There never comes a day 
when we can live nobly and worthily without 
effort, without resistance to wrong influences, 
without struggle against the power of tempta- 
tion. It never gets easy to be good. Evermore 
the cross lies at our feet, and daily it must be 
taken up and carried, if we would follow Christ. 
We are apt to grow weary of this unending 
struggle, and to become discouraged, because 
there is neither rest nor abatement in it. 

But here again we learn that it is out of just 
such struggles that we must get the nobleness 
and beauty of character after which we are 
striving. One of the old Scotch martyrs had on 
his crest the motto, Sub pondere cresco ("I grow 
under a weight "). On the crest was a palm- 
tree, with weights depending from its fronds. 
In spite of the weights the tree was straight as 
an arrow, lifting its crown of graceful foliage 
high up in the serene air. It is well known 
that the palm grows best loaded down with 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 63 

weights. Thus this martyr testified that he, 
[ike the beautiful tree of the Orient, grew best 
in his spiritual life under weights. 

This is the universal law of spiritual growth. 
There must be resistance, struggle, conflict, or 
there can be no development of strength. We 
are inclined to pity those whose lives are scenes 
of toil and hardship, but God's angels do not 
pity them, if only they are victorious ; for in 
their overcoming they are climbing daily upward 
toward the holy heights of sainthood. The 
beatitudes in the Apocalypse are all for over- 
comers. Heaven's rewards and crowns lie be- 
yond battle-plains. Spiritual life always needs 
opposition. It flourishes most luxuriantly in 
adverse circumstances. We grow best under 
weights. We find our richest blessings in the 
burdens we dread to take up. 

The word " character" in its origin is sug- 
gestive. It is from a root which signifies to 
scratch, to engrave, to cut into furrows. Then 
it comes to mean that which is engraved or cut 
on anything. In life, therefore, it is that which 
experiences cut or furrow in the soul. A baby 



64 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

has no character. Its life is like a piece of 
white paper, with nothing yet written upon it ; 
or it is like a smooth marble tablet, on which, as 
yet, the sculptor has cut nothing ; or the can- 
vas, waiting for the painter's colors. Charac- 
ter is formed as the years go on. It is the 
writing, — the song, the story, put upon the 
paper. It is the engraving, the sculpturing, 
which the marble receives under the chisel. It 
is the picture which the artist paints on the 
canvas. Final character is what a man is when 
he has lived through all his earthly years. In 
the Christian it is the lines of the likeness of 
Christ limned, sometimes furrowed and scarred, 
upon his soul by the divine Spirit through the 
means of grace and the experiences of his own 
life. 

I saw a beautiful vase, and asked its story. 
Once it was a lump of common clay lying in 
the darkness. Then it was rudely dug out and 
crushed and ground in the mill, and then put 
upon the wheel and shaped, then polished and 
tinted and put into the furnace and burned. 
At last, after many processes, it stood upon the 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 65 

table, a gem of graceful beauty. In some way 
analogous to this every noble character is 
formed. Common clay at first, it passes 
through a thousand processes and experiences, 
many of them hard and painful, until at length 
it is presented before God, faultless in its 
beauty, bearing the features of Christ himself. 

Spiritual beauty never can be reached with- 
out cost. The blessing is always hidden away 
in the burden, and can be gotten only by lifting 
the burden. Self must die if the good in us is 
to live and shine out in radiance. Michael 
Angelo used to say, as the chippings flew 
thick from the marble on the floor of his studio, 
"While the marble wastes, the image grows." 
There must be a wasting of self, a chipping 
away continually of things that are dear to 
nature, if the things that are true, and just, and 
honorable, and pure, and lovely, are to come 
out in the life. The marble must waste while 
the image grows. 

Then take suffering. Here, too, the same 
law prevails. Every one suffers. Said Augus- 
tine, " God had one Son without sin ; he has 



66 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

none without sorrow." From infancy's first 
cry until the old man's life goes out in a gasp 
of pain, suffering is a condition of existence. 
It comes in manifold forms. Now it is in sick 
ness ; the body is racked with pain or burns in 
fever. Ofttimes sickness is a heavy burden. 
Yet even this burden has a blessing in it for 
the Christian. Sickness rightly borne makes 
us better. It unbinds the world's fetters. It 
purifies the heart. It sobers the spirit. It 
turns the eyes heavenward. It strips off much 
of the illusion of life and uncovers its better 
realities. Sickness in a home of faith, prayer, 
and love, softens all the household hearts, 
makes sympathy deeper, draws all the .family 
closer together. 

Trouble comes in many other forms. It may 
be a bitter disappointment which falls upon a 
young life when love has not been true, or when 
character has proved unworthy, turning the fair 
blossoms of hope to dead leaves under the feet. 
There are lives that bear the pain and carry the 
hidden memorials of such a grief through long 
years, making them sad at heart even when 
walking in sweetest sunshine. 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 67 

Or it may be the failure of some other hope, 
as when one has followed a bright dream of 
ambition for days and years, finding it only a 
dream. Or it may be the keener, more bitter 
grief which comes to one when a friend — a 
child, a brother or sister, a husband or wife — 
does badly. In such a case even the divine 
comfort cannot heal the heart's hurt ; love can- 
not but suffer, and there is no hand that can 
lessen the pang. The anguish which love en- 
dures for others' sins is among the saddest of 
earth's sorrows. 

There are griefs that hang no crape on the 
door-bell, that wear no black garments, that 
close no shutters, that drop no tears which men 
can see, that can get no sympathy save that of 
the blessed Christ and perhaps of a closest 
human brother, and must wear smiles before 
men and go on with life's work as if all were 
gladness within the heart. If we knew the 
inner life of many of the people we meet, we 
would be very gentle with them and would ex- 
cuse the things in them that seem strange or 
eccentric to us. They are carrying burdens of 



68 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

secret grief. We do not begin to know the 
sorrows of our brothers. 

There is no need to try to solve that old, yet 
always new, question of human hearts, " Why 
does God permit so much suffering in his chil- 
dren ? " It is idle to ask this question, and all 
efforts at answering it are not only vain, but 
they are even irreverent. We may be sure, 
however, of one thing, that in every pain and 
trial there is a blessing folded. We may miss 
it, but it is there, and the loss is ours if we do 
not get it. Every night of sorrow carries in its 
dark bosom its own lamps of comfort. The 
darkness of grief and trial is full of benedic- 
tions. 

"The dark hath many dear avails; 
The dark distils divinest dews; 
The dark is rich with nightingales, 
With dreams, and with the heavenly muse. 

*' Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, 

Complain thou not, my heart, for these 
Bank in the current of the will." 

The most blessed lives in the world are those 
that have borne the burden of suffering. 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 69 

" Where, think you," asks James Martineau, 
"does the Heavenly Father hear the tones of 
deepest love, and see on the uplifted face the 
light of most heartfelt gratitude? Not where 
his gifts are most profuse, but where they are 
most meagre ; not within the halls of success- 
ful ambition, or even in the dwellings of un- 
broken domestic peace ; but where the outcast, 
flying from persecution, kneels in the even- 
ing on the rocks whereon he sleeps ; at the 
fresh grave, where, as the earth is opened, 
heaven in answer opens too ; by the pillow of 
the wasted sufferer, where the sunken eye, 
denied sleep, converses with the silent stars, 
and the hollow voice enumerates in low prayer 
the scanty list of comforts, the easily remem- 
bered blessings, and the shortened tale of hopes. 
Genial, almost to a miracle, is the soil of sorrow, 
wherein the smallest seed of love, timely falling, 
becometh a tree, in whose foliage the birds of 
blessed song lodge and sing unceasingly." 

The truly happiest, sweetest, tenderest homes 
are not those where there has been no sorrow, 
but those which have been overshadowed with 



70 THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. 

grief, and where Christ's comfort was accepted 
The very memory of the sorrow is a gentle ben* 
ediction that broods ever over the household, 
like the afterglow of sunset, like the silence 
that comes after prayer. 

In every burden of sorrow there is a blessing 
sent from God, which we ought not to thrust 
away. In one of the battles of the Crimea, a 
cannon ball struck inside a fort, gashing the 
earth and sadly marring the garden beauty of 
the place. But from the ugly chasm there 
burst forth a spring of water, which flowed on 
thereafter, a living fountain. So the strokes of 
sorrow gash our hearts, leaving ofttimes wounds 
and scars, but they open for us fountains of rich 
blessing and of new life. 

•' Then Sorrow whispered gently : ' Take 

This burden up. Be not afraid. 
An hour is short. Thou scarce wilt wake 

To consciousness that I have laid 
My hand upon thee, when the hour 

Shall all have passed ; and gladder then 
For the brief pain's uplifting power, 

Thou shalt but pity grierless men.' * 



THE BLESSING OF A BURDEN. J I 

These are hints of the blessings of burdens. 
Our dull task-work, accepted, will train us into 
strong and noble character. Our temptations 
and hardships, met victoriously, knit thews and 
sinews of strength in our souls. Our pain and 
sorrow, endured with sweet trust and submit 
sion, leave us with life purified and enriched, 
with more of Christ in us. In every burden 
that God lays upon us, there is a blessing for 
us, if only we will take it. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY, 

"Like the star 

That shines afar, 

Without haste 

And without rest, 

Let each man wheel, with steady sway, 

Round the task that rules the day, 

And do his best." 

— Goethe. 

Peace in the heart is one of the conditions of 
good work. We cannot do our best in any- 
thing if we are fretted and anxious. A feverish 
heart makes an inflamed brain, a clouded eye, 
and an unsteady hand. The people who really 
accomplish the most, and achieve the best re- 
sults, are those of calm, self-controlled spirit. 
Those who are nervous and excited may be 
always busy, and always under pressure of 
haste; but in the end they do far less work 
than if they wrought calmly and steadily, and 

were never in a hurry. 
72 



HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 73 

Nervous haste is always hindering haste. It 
does faulty work, and does but little of it in the 
end. Really rapid workers are always delib- 
erate in their movements, never appearing to 
be in any hurry whatever ; and yet they pass 
swiftly from task to task, doing each duty well 
because they are calm and unflustered, and, 
with their wits about them, work with clear eye, 
steady nerve, and skilful hand. 

An eminent French surgeon used to say to 
his students, when they were engaged in diffi- 
cult and delicate operations, in which coolness 
and firmness were needed, " Gentlemen, don't 
be in a hurry ; for there's no time to lose." 

The people in all lines of duty who do the 
most work are the calmest, most unhurried peo- 
ple in the community. Duties never wildly 
chase each other in their lives. One task never 
crowds another out, nor ever compels hurried^ 
and therefore imperfect, doing. The calm spirit 
works methodically, doing one thing at a time, 
and doing it well ; and it therefore works 
swiftly, though never appearing to be in haste. 

We need the peace of God in our heart just 



f4 HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 

as really for the doing well of the little things 
of our secular life as for the doing of the great- 
est duties of Christ's kingdom. Our face ought 
to shine, and our spirit ought to be tranquil, and 
our eye ought to be clear, and our nerves ought: 
to be steady, as we press through the tasks of 
our commonest day. Then we shall do them 
all well, slurring nothing, marring nothing. 
We want heart-peace before we begin any day's 
duties, and we should wait at Christ's feet till 
we get his quieting touch upon our heart ere we 
go forth. 

It is especially true in spiritual work that we 
must know the secret of peace before we can 
minister either swiftly or effectively to others 
in our Master's name. Feverishness of spirit 
makes the hand unskilful in delicate duty. A 
troubled heart cannot give comfort to other 
troubled hearts ; it must first become calm and 
quiet. It is often said that one who has suf* 
fered is prepared to help others in suffering; 
but this is true only when one has suffered 
victoriously, and has passed up out of the 
deep, dark valley of pain and tears to the radi* 



HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 75 

ant mountain-tops of peace. An uncomforted 
mourner cannot be a messenger of consolation 
to another in grief. One whose heart is still 
vexed and uncalmed cannot be a physician to 
hearts with bleeding wounds. We must first 
have been comforted of God ourselves, before 
we can comfort others in their tribulations. 

The same is true of all spiritual ministry. 
We need a steady hand to touch the work of 
Christ's kingdom. One of our Lord's earlier 
miracles furnishes an illustration of this truth. 
Jesus was called to heal a woman who lay sick 
of a great fever. One of the Gospels describes 
the cure in these striking words : " He touched 
her hand, and the fever left her ; and she arose 
and ministered unto them." We readily un- 
derstand this record in its primary reference 
to the physical cure that was wrought by our 
Lord. We know, of course, that the woman 
could not minister to others while the fever 
was on her. When sore sickness comes, the 
busiest, fullest hands must drop their tasks, 
No matter how important the work is, how 
essential it may appear, it must be laid down 



y6 HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 

when painful illness seizes us. We must be 
healed of our fever before we can minister. 

But there are other fevers besides those 
which burn in men's bodies. There are heart- 
fevers which may rage within us, even when 
our bodies are in perfect health. We find 
people with feverish spirits — unhappy, dis- 
contented, fretted, worried, perhaps insubmis- 
sive and rebellious. Or they may be in a 
fever of fear or dread. These inward fevers 
are worse evils than mere bodily illness. It 
is better in sickness to have our heart's fever 
depart, even though we must longer keep our 
pain, than to recover our physical health, mean- 
while keeping our fretfulness and impatience 
uncured. 

We cannot minister while heart-fever of 
any kind is on us. We may go on with our 
Work, but we cannot do it well, and there will 
be little blessing in it. Discontent hinders 
any life's usefulness. Jesus loved Martha, and 
accepted her service because he knew she 
loved him ; but he plainly told her that her 
feverishness was not beautiful, and that it 



HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. J J 

detracted from the worth and the full accept- 
ableness of the good work she did ; and he 
pointed her to Mary's quiet peace as a better 
way of living and serving. Anxiety of any 
kind unfits us in some degree for work. It is 
only when Christ comes and lays his hand 
upon our heart, and cures its fever, that we 
are ready for ministering in his name in the 
most efficient way. 

There is a little story of a busy woman's life 
which illustrates this lesson. She was the 
mother of a large family, and, being in plain 
circumstances, was required to do her own 
work. Sometimes, in the multiplicity of her 
tasks and cares, she lost the sweetness of her 
peace, and, like Martha, became troubled and 
worried with her much serving. One morning 
she had been unusually hurried, and things had 
not gone smoothly. She had breakfast to get 
for her family, her husband to care for as he 
hasted away early to his work, and her children 
to make ready for school. There were other 
household duties which filled the poor, weak 
woman's hands, until her strength was well- 



78 HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 

nigh utterly exhausted. And she had not gone 
through it all that morning in a sweet, peace- 
ful way. She had allowed herself to lose her 
patience, and to grow fretful, vexed, and un- 
happy. She had spoken quick, hasty, petulant 
words to her husband and her children. Her 
heart had been in a fever of irritation and dis- 
quiet all the morning. 

When the children were gone, and the press- 
ing tasks were finished, and the house was all 
quiet, the tired woman crept upstairs to hei 
own room. She was greatly discouraged. She 
felt that her morning had been a most unsatis- 
factory one ; that she had sadly failed in her 
duty ; that she had grieved her Master by her 
want of patience and gentleness, and had hurt 
her children's lives by her fretfulness and her 
ill-tempered words. Shutting her door, she 
took up her Bible and read the story of the 
healing of the sick woman : " He touched her 
hand, and the fever left her ; and she arose 
and ministered unto them. ,, 

"Ah!" said she, "if I could have had that 
touch before I began my morning's work, the 



HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 79 

fever would have left me, and I should have 
been prepared to minister sweetly and peace- 
fully to my family.'' She had learned that she 
needed the touch of Christ to make her ready 
for beautiful and gentle service. 

In contrast with this story, and showing the 
blessed sweetness and holy influence of a life 
that gets Christ's touch in the morning, there 
is this account by Archdeacon Farrar of his 
mother: "My mother's habit was, every day, 
immediately after breakfast, to withdraw for 
an hour to her own room, and to spend that 
hour in reading the Bible, in meditation, and 
in prayer. From that hour, as from a pure 
fountain, she drew the strength and the sweet- 
ness which enabled her to fulfil all her duties, 
and to remain unruffled by all the worries and 
pettinesses which are so often the intolerable 
trial of narrow neighborhoods. As I think of 
her life, and of all it had to bear, I see the 
absolute triumph of Christian grace in the 
lovely ideal of a Christian lady. I never saw 
her temper disturbed ; I never heard her speak 
one word of anger, or of calumny, or of idle 



8o HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 

gossip. I never observed in her any sign oi 
a single sentiment unbecoming to a soul which 
had drunk of the river of the water of life, and 
which had fed upon manna in the barren wilder 
ness. The world is the better for the passage 
of such souls across its surface. They may 
seem to be as much forgotten as the drops of 
rain which fall into the barren sea, but each 
rain-drop adds to the volume of refreshful and 
purifying waters. 'The healing of the world 
is in its nameless saints. A single star seems 
nothing, but a thousand scattered stars break 
up the night and make it beautiful/ " 

There are many busy mothers to whom this 
lesson may come almost as a revelation. No 
hands are fuller of tasks, no heart is fuller of 
cares, than the hands and the heart of a mother 
of a large family of young children. It is 
little wonder if sometimes she loses her sweet- 
ness of spirit in the pressure of care that is 
upon her. But this lesson is worth learning. 
Let the mothers wait on their knees each morn 
ing, before they begin their work, for the toucl 
of Christ's hand upon their heart. Then th$ 



HEART-PEACE BEFORE MINISTRY. 8 1 

fever will leave them, and they can enter with 
calm peace on the work of the long, hard day. 

The lesson, however, is for us all. We are 
in no condition for good work of any kind when 
we are fretted and anxious in mind. It is onl)i 
when the peace of God is in our heart that we 
are ready for true and really helpful ministry. 
A feverish heart makes a worried face, and a 
worried face casts a shadow. A troubled spirit 
mars the temper and disposition. It unfits one 
for being a comforter of others, for giving 
cheer and inspiration, for touching other lives 
with good and helpful impulses. Peace must 
come before ministry. We need to have our 
fever cured before we go out to our work. 
Hence, we should begin each new day at the 
Master's feet, and get his cooling, quieting 
touch upon our hot hand. Then, and not till 
then, shall we be ready for good service in his 
name. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MOKAL CUKVATUKES. 

u I think we are too ready with complaint 
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope 
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope 
Of yon gray blank sky, we might grow faint 
To muse upon eternity's constraint 
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope 
Must widen early, is it well to droop, 
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?" 

— Mrs. Browning. 

Our Lord's miracles are parables in act. A 
woman came to him bent almost double, and 
went away straight. The human form is made 
for erectness. This is one of the marks of 
nobility in man, in contrast with the downward 
bending and looking of other animals. Man is 
the only creature that bears this erect form. 
It is a part of the image of God upon him. It 
indicates heavenly aspiration, hunger for God, 
desire for pure and lofty things, capacity for 



MORAL CURVATURES. 83 

immortal blessedness. It tells of man's hope 
and home above the earth, beyond the stars. 
Says an old writer, " God gave to man a face 
directed upwards, and bade him look at the 
heavens, and raise his uplifted countenance 
toward the stars." The Greek word for "man" 
meant the upward looking. The bending of 
the form and face downward, toward the earth, 
has always been the symbol of a soul turned 
unworthily toward lower things, forgetful of 
its true home. Milton has this thought in 
describing Mammon : — 

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven ; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent." 

The look of a man's eyes tells where his heart 
is, whither his desires are reaching and tend- 
ing, how his life is growing. 

There are a great many bent people in the 
world. Physical bending may be caused by 
accident or disease, and is no mark of spirit- 
ual curvature. Many a deformed body is the 
home of a noble and holy soul, with eyes and 



84 MORAL CURVATURES. 

aspirations turned upward toward God. I 
remember a woman in my first parish who 
then for fourteen years had sat in her chair, 
unable to lift hand or foot, every joint drawn, 
her wasted body frightfully bent. Yet she had 
a transfigured face, telling of a beautiful soul 
within. Joy and peace shone out through that 
poor tortured body. Disease may drag down 
the erect form, until all its beauty is gone, and 
the inner life meanwhile may be erect as an 
angel, with its eyes and aspirations turned 
upward toward God. 

But there are crooked souls — souls that are 
bent down. This may be the case even while 
the body is straight as an arrow. There are 
men and women whose forms are admired for 
their erectness, their graceful proportions, their 
lithe movements, their lovely features, yet 
whose souls are debased, whose desires are 
grovelling, whose characters are sadly misshapen 
and deformed. 

Sin always bends the soul. Many a young 
man comes out from a holy home in the beauty 
and strength of youth, wearing the unsullied 



MORAL CURVATURES. 85 

robes of innocence, with eye clear and uplifted, 
with aspirations for noble things, with hopes 
that are exalted ; but a few years later he ap- 
pears a debased and ruined man, with soul bent 
sadly downward. The bending begins in slight 
yieldings to sin, but the tendency unchecked 
grows and fixes itself in the life in permanent 
moral disfigurement. 

A stage-driver had held the lines for many 
years, and when he grew old, his hands were 
crooked into hooks, and his fingers were so 
stiffened that they could not be straightened 
out. There is a similar process that goes on in 
men's souls when they continue to do the same 
things over and over. One who is trained from 
childhood to be gentle, kindly, patient, to control 
the temper, to speak softly, to be loving and 
charitable, will grow into the radiant beauty 
of love. One who accustoms himself to think 
habitually and only of noble and worthy things, 
who sets his affections on things above, and 
strives to reach "whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely/' will 



86 MORAL CURVATURES. 

grow continually upward, toward spiritual beau- 
ty. But on the other hand, if one gives way 
from childhood to all ugly tempers, all resentful 
feelings, all bitterness and anger, his life will 
shape itself into the unbeauty of these disposi- 
tions. One whose mind turns to debasing 
things, things unholy, unclean, will find his 
whole soul bending and growing toward the 
earth in permanent moral curvature. 

There is also a bending of the life by sorrow. 
The experience of sorrow is scarcely less peril- 
ous than that of temptation. The common 
belief is that grief always makes people better. 
But this is not true. If the sufferer submits to 
God with loving confidence, and is victorious 
through faith, sorrow's outcome is blessing and 
good. But many are crushed by their sorrow. 
They yield to it, and it bears them down be- 
neath its weight. They turn their faces away 
from heaven's blue and the light of God, toward 
the grave's darkness, and their souls grow 
toward the gloom. 

Here is a mother who several years since lost 
by death a beautiful daughter. The mother 



MORAL CURVATURES. 87 

was a Christian woman, and her child was also 
a Christian, dying in sweet hope. Yet never 
since that coffin was closed has the mother 
lifted up her eyes toward God in submission 
and hope. She visits the cemetery on Sun= 
days, but never the church. She goes with 
downcast look about her home, weeping when- 
ever her daughter's name is mentioned, and 
complains of God's hardness and unkindness in 
taking away her child. She is bent down with 
her eyes to the earth, and sees only the clods 
and the dust and the grave's gloom, and sees 
not the blue sky, the bright stars, and the sweet 
face of the Father. So long has she now been 
thus bowed down in the habit of sadness and 
grieving, that she can in no wise lift herself up. 
Since I began to write this chapter I have 
had a long talk with one whose life is sorely 
bent. Ten years since I first knew her as a 
bright and happy young girl, her face sunny 
in the light of God's love. Trouble came into 
her life in many forms. Her own father proved 
unworthy, failing in all the sacred duties of 
affection toward his child. Events in her own 



88 MORAL CURVATURES. 

life were disappointing and discouraging. 
Friends in whom she had trusted failed in that 
faithfulness and helpfulness which one has a 
right to expect from one's friends. There was 
a succession of unhappy experiences, through 
several years, all tending to hurt her heart-life. 
As the result of all this, she has become embit- 
tered and hardened, not only against those who 
have wronged her and treated her unjustly, but 
even against God. So long has she yielded to 
these feelings that her whole life has been bent 
down from its upward, Godward look into set- 
tled despondency. God has altogether faded 
out of her soul's vision, and she thinks of him 
only as unkind and unjust. To restore her life 
to its former brightness and beauty will require 
a moral miracle as great as that by which the 
body of the crooked woman was made straight. 
Then there are liv^s also that are bowed 
down by toil and c*\re. For many people, life's 
burdens are very heavy. There are fathers of 
large families who sometimes find their load al- 
most more than they can bear, in their efforts to 
provide for those who are dear to them. There 



MORAL CURVATURES. 89 

are mothers who, under their burdens of house- 
hold care, at times feel themselves bowed down, 
and scarcely able longer to go on. In all 
places of responsibility, where men are called 
to stand, the load many times grows very 
heavy, and stalwart forms bend under it. This 
world's work is hard for most of us. Life is 
not play to any who take it earnestly. 

And many persons yield to the weight of a 
duty, and let themselves be bent down under it. 
We see men bowing under their load, until 
their very body grows crooked, and they can 
look only downward. We see them become 
prematurely old. The light goes out of their 
eyes ; the freshness fades out of their cheeks ; 
the sweetness leaves their spirit. Few things 
in life are sadder than the way some people let 
themselves be bent down by their load of duty 
or care. There really is no reason why this 
should be so. God never puts any greater bur- 
den upon us than we are able to bear, with the 
help he is ready to give. Christ stands ever 
close beside us, willing to carry the heaviest 
end of every load that is laid upon us. 



90 MORAL CURVATURES. 

Men never break down so long as they keep 
a happy, joyous heart. It is the sad heart that 
tires. Whatever our load, we should always 
keep a songful spirit in our breast. There are 
two ways of meeting hard experiences. One 
way is to struggle and resist, refusing to yield. 
The result is, the wounding of the soul and the 
intensifying of the hardness. The other way is 
sweetly to accept the circumstances or the re- 
straints, to make the best of them, and to en- 
dure them songfully and cheerfully. Those 
who live in the first of these ways grow old at 
mid-life. Those who take the other way of 
life keep a young, happy heart even to old 
age. 

The true way to live is to yield to no burden ; 
to carry the heaviest load with courage and 
gladness ; never to let one's eyes be turned 
downward toward the earth, but to keep them 
ever lifted up to the hills. Men whose work 
requires them to stoop all the time — to work in 
a bent posture — every now and then may be 
seen straightening themselves up, taking a long, 
deep breath of air, and looking up toward the 



MORAL CURVATURES. 91 

skies. Thus their bodies are preserved in 
health and erectness in spite of their work. 
Whatever our toil or burden, we should train 
ourselves to look often upward, to stand erect, 
and get a frequent glimpse of the sky of God's 
love, and a frequent breath of heaven's pure, 
sweet air. Thus we shall keep our souls erect 
under the heaviest load of work or care. 

The miracle of the straightening of the 
woman who was bent double, has its gospel 
of precious hope for any who have failed to 
learn earlier the lesson of keeping straight. 
The bowed down may yet be lifted up. The 
curvature of eighteen years' growth and stif- 
fening was cured in a moment. The woman 
who for so long had not been able to look up, 
went away with her eyes upturned to God in 
praise. 

The same miracle Christ is able to work now 
upon souls that are bent, whether by sin, by 
sorrow, or by life's load of toil. He can undo 
sin's terrible work, and restore the divine image 
to the soul. He can give such comfort to the 
sad heart that eyes long downcast shall be lifted 



Q2 MORAL CURVATURES. 

up to look upon God's face in loving submission 
and joy. He can put such songs into the 
hearts of the weary and overwrought that the 
crooked form shall grow straight, and bright- 
ness shall come again into the tired face. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 

" The lives which seem so poor, so low, 

The hearts which are so cramped and dull, 
The baffled hopes, the impulse slow, 
Thou takest, touchest all, and lol 
They blossom to the beautiful." 

— Susan Coolidge. 

Every Christian's life should be transfigured. 
There is a sense in which even a true believer's 
body becomes transfigured. We have all seen 
faces that appeared to shine as if there were 
some hidden light behind them. There are 
some old people who have learned well life's 
lessons of patience, peace, contentment, love, 
trust, and hope, and whose faces really glow as 
they near the sunset gates. Sometimes it is a 
saintly sufferer, who, in long endurance of pain, 
learns to lie on Christ's bosom in sweet unmur- 
muring quiet, and whose features take upon 

93 



94 TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 

themselves increasingly the brightness of holy 
peace. 

But whatever grace may do for the body, it 
always transfigures the character. The love of 
God finds us ruined sinners, and leaves us glori- 
fied saints. We are predestinated "to be con- 
formed to the image of his Son." Nor are we 
to wait for death to transform us ; the work 
should begin at once. We have a responsibil- 
ity, too, in this work. The sculptor takes the 
blackened marble block and hews it into a form 
of beauty. The marble is passive in his hands, 
and does nothing but submit to be cut and 
hewn and polished as he will. But we are not 
insensate marble ; we have a part in the fash- 
ioning of our lives into spiritual holiness. We 
will never become like Christ without our own 
desire and effort. 

We ought to know well what our part is, 
what we have to do with our own sanctification. 
How, then, may we become transfigured Chris- 
tians ? 

There is a transfiguring power in prayer. It 
was as our Lord was praying that the fashion of 



TRANSFIGURED LIVES, 95 

his countenance was altered. What is prayer ? 
It is far more than the tame saying over of cer* 
tain forms of devotion. It is the pouring out of 
the heart's deepest cravings. It is the highest 
act of which the soul is capable. When you 
pray truly, all that is best, noblest, most exalted, 
purest, heavenliest in you, presses up toward 
God. Hence earnest prayer always lights up 
the very face, and lifts up the life into higher, 
holier mood. We grow toward that which we 
much desire. Hence prayers for Christ-likeness 
have a transfiguring effect. 

Holy thoughts in the heart have also a trans- 
figuring influence on the life. " As he thinketh 
in his heart, so is he." If we allow jealousies, 
envies, ugly tempers, pride, and other evil 
things to stay in our heart, our life will grow 
into the likeness of these unlovely things. But 
if we cherish pure, gentle, unselfish, holy 
thoughts and feelings, our life will become 
beautiful. 

Professor Drummond tells of a young girl 
whose character ripened into rare loveliness. 
Her friends watched her growing gentleness 



96 TRANSFIGURED LIVES, 

and heavenliness with wonder. They could not 
understand the secret of it. She wore about 
her neck a little locket within which no one was 
allowed to look. Once, however, she was very 
ill, and one of her companions was permitted 
then to open this sacred ornament, and she saw 
there the words, " Whom having not seen I 
love." This was the secret. It was love for 
the unseen Christ that transfigured her life. If 
we think continually of the Christ, meditating 
upon him, thinking over sweet thoughts of him, 
and letting his love dwell within us, we shall 
grow like him. 

Communion with Christ transfigures a life. 
Every one we meet leaves a touch upon us 
which becomes part of our character. Our 
lives are like sheets of paper, and every one 
who comes writes a word, or a line, or leaves 
a little picture painted there. Our intimate 
companions and friends, who draw very close 
to us, and are much with us, entering into our 
inner heart-life, make very deep impressions 
upon us. 

If, therefore, we live with Christ, abide in 



TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 97 

him, the close, continued companionship with 
him will change us into his likeness. Personal 
friendship with Christ in this world is as 
possible as any merely human friendship. The 
companionship is spiritual, but it is real. The 
devout Christian has no other friend who enters 
so fully into his life as does the Lord Christ 
Jesus. The effect of this companionship is the 
transfiguring of the character. It is not with- 
out reason that the artists paint the beloved 
disciple as likest his Lord in features. He 
knew Jesus more intimately than any of the 
other disciples, and, in his deeper, closer com- 
panionship, was more affected and impressed by 
the Lord's beauty of holiness. 

Again, keeping the eye upon the likeness of 
Christ transfigures the life. The old monks 
intently gazed upon the crucifix, and they said 
that the prints of the nails would come in their 
hands and feet, and the thorn-scars in their 
brow as they beheld. It was but a gross fancy ; 
yet in the fancy there is a spiritual truth. 
Gazing by faith upon Christ, the lines of his 
beauty indeed print themselves on our hearts. 



98 TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 

This is the meaning of St. Paul's word: "We 
all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror 
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into 
the same image:" The Gospel is the mirror. 
There we see the image of Christ. If we 
earnestly, continually, and lovingly behold it, 
the effect will be the changing of our own lives 
into the same likeness. The transformation 
is wrought by the divine Spirit, and our part 
is only to behold, to continue beholding, the 
blessed beauty. We sit before the camera, and 
our own picture is printed on the prepared 
glass. We sit before Christ, and we become 
the camera, and his image is printed on our 
soul. 

There is a pathetic story of a French sculp- 
tor, which illustrates the sacredness with which 
life's ideal should be cherished and guarded. 
He was a genius, and was at work on his 
masterpiece. But he was a poor man, and 
lived in a small garret, which was studio, work- 
shop, and bedroom to him. He had his statue 
almost finished, in clay, when one night there 
came suddenly a great frost over the city. The 



TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 99 

sculptor lay on his bed, with his statue before 
him in the centre of the fireless room. As the 
chill air came down upon him, he knew that 
in the intense cold there was danger that the 
water in the interstices of the clay would freeze 
and destroy his precious work. So the old man 
arose from his bed, and took the clothes that 
had covered him in his sleep, and reverently 
wrapped them about his statue to save it, then 
lay down himself in the cold, uncovered. In 
the morning, when his friends came in, they 
found the old sculptor dead ; but the image 
was preserved unharmed. 

We each have in our soul, if we are true 
believers in Christ, a vision of spiritual loveli- 
ness into which we are striving to fashion our 
lives. This vision is our conception of the 
character of Christ. " That is what I am going 
to be some day," we say. Far away beyond 
our present attainment as this vision may shine, 
yet we are ever striving to reach it. This is 
the ideal which we carry in our heart amid all 
our toiling and struggling. This ideal we must 
keep free from all marring or stain. We must 



IOO TRANSFIGURED LIVES. 

save it though, like the old sculptor, we lose our 
very life in guarding it. We should be willing 
to die rather than give it up to be destroyed. 
We should preserve the image of Christ, bright, 
radiant, unsoiled, in our soul, until it transforms 
our dull, sinful, earthly life into its own trans* 
figured beauty. 

No other aim in life is worthy of an immortal 
being. We may become like the angels ; what 
debasement, then, to let our lives, with all their 
glorious possibilities, be dragged down into the 
dust of shame and dishonor! Rather let us 
seek continually the glory for which we were 
made and redeemed. "Beloved, now are we 
children of God, and it is not yet made mani- 
fest what we shall be. We know that, if he 
shall be manifested, we shall be like him ; for 
we shall see him even as he is. And every one 
that hath this hope set on him purifieth him- 
self, even as he is pure." 

** Wonderful the whiteness of thy glory ; 
Can we truly that perfection share ? 
Yes ; our lives are pages of thy story, 
We thy shape and superscription bear ; 



TRANSFIGURED LIVES. IOI 

Tarnished forms — torn leaves — but thou canst mend 
them, 

Thou thine own completeness canst unfold 
From our imperfections, and wilt end them — 

Dross consuming, turning dust to gold." 

A drop of water lay one day in a gutter, 
soiled, stained, polluted. Looking up into the 
blue of the sky, it began to wish for purity, to 
long to be cleansed and made crystalline. Its 
sigh was heard, and it was quickly lifted up by 
the sun's gentle fingers — up, out of the foul 
gutter, into the sweet air, then higher and 
higher; at length the gentle winds caught it 
and bore it away, away, and by and by it rested 
on a distant mountain-top, a flake of pure, white, 
beautiful snow. 

This is a little parable of what the grace of 
God does for every sinful life that longs and 
cries for purity and holiness. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE INTERPRETATION OP SORROW, 

"So much we miss 
If love is weak ; so much we gain 
If love is strong; God thinks no pain 
Too sharp or lasting to ordain 
To teach us this." 

— Helen Hunt Jackson, 

There will always be mysteries in sorrow. 

Men will always wonder what it means. It is- 

impossible for us, with our earthly limitations, 

to understand it. Even the strongest Christian 

faith will have its questions, and many of its 

questions will have to remain unanswered until 

the horizon of life is widened, and its dim light 

becomes full and clear in heaven. Meanwhile, 

however, some of these questions may be at 

least partially answered, and grief's poignancy 

in some slight measure alleviated. And surely 

no smallest gleam of comfort should be withheld 

102 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 103 

from the world that needs comfort so sorely, and 
cries out so hungrily for it. 

Human hearts are the same everywhere. 
Sorrow's experiences, while strangely diverse, 
are yet alike in their general features. Wher- 
ever we listen to the suppressed voices of grief, 
we hear the same questions. What has been 
answer to one, will therefore be answer to 
thousands more. Recently, in one day, two 
letters came to me from sorrowing ones, with 
questions. Whether any comfort was given in 
the private answers or not, it may be that the 
mere stating of the questions, with a few sen- 
tences concerning each, may be helpful to others 
who are carrying like burdens. 

One of these letters is from a Christian man 
whose only son has been led into sinful courses, 
swiftly descending to the saddest depths. The 
story is too painful to be repeated in these 
pages. In his sore distress, the father, a godly 
man, a man of strong faith and noble wisdom, 
cries out : " What is the comfort even of Christ 
and the Bible for me? How can I roll this bur- 
den of mine upon God ? " 



104 THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 

In answer to these questions it must be re 
membered that there are some things which 
even the richest, divinest comfort cannot do* 
For one thing, it cannot take away the pain of 
grief or sorrow. Our first thought of comfort 
usually is that it shall lift off our burden. We 
soon learn, however, that it is not in this way 
that comfort ordinarily comes. It does not 
make the grief any less. It does not make oui 
hearts any less sensitive to anguish. " Conso- 
lation implies rather an augmentation of the 
power of bearing than a diminution of the bur- 
den." In this case, it cannot lift off the loving 
father's heart the burden of disappointment and 
anguish which he experiences in seeing his son 
swept away in the currents of temptation. No 
possible comfort can do this. The perfect peace 
in which God promises to keep those whose 
minds are stayed on him, is not a painless peace 
in any case of suffering. The crushed father 
cannot expect a comfort which will make him 
forget his wandering, sinning child, or which 
will cause him to feel no longer the poignant 
anguish which the boy's course causes in his 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 105 

heart. Father-love must be destroyed to make 
such comforting possible, and that would be a 
sorer calamity than any sorrow. 

The comfort in such a grief, is that which 
comes through faith in God even in the sore 
pain. The child was given to God in his in- 
fancy, and was brought up as God's child along 
his early years. Who will say that he may not 
yet, in some way, at some time, be brought back 
to God ? The daily burden may then daily be 
laid in the divine hands. The heart's anguish 
may express itself not in despairing cries, but in 
believing prayers, inspired by the promises, and 
kindled into fervency by blessed hope. Then 
peace will come, not painless peace, but peace 
which lies on Christ's bosom in the darkness, 
and loves and trusts and asks no questions, but 
waits with all of hope's expectancy. 

At the same time we are never to forget, 
while we trust God for the outcome of our dis- 
appointments, that every sorrow has its mission 
to our life. There is something he desires it to 
work in us. What it may be in any particular 
instance we cannot tell ; nor is it wise for us to 



106 THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 

ask. The wisest, truest thing we can do is rev* 
erently to open our hearts to the ministry of 
the sorrow, asking God to do his will in us, not 
allowing us to hinder the beautiful work he 
would do, and helping us to rejoice even in the 
grief. The tears may continue to flow, but 
then with Mrs. Browning we can sing : — 

" I praise thee while my days go on ; 
I love thee while my days go on ; 
Through dark and death, through fire and frost, 
With emptied arms and treasure lost, 
I thank thee while my days go on." 

The other letter referred to is from another 
father, over whom wave after wave of sorrow 
had passed. Within a brief space of time two 
children were taken away. The one was a son 
who had entered his professional career, and 
had large hope and promise for the future — a 
young man of rare abilities and many noble 
qualities. The other was a daughter, who had 
reached womanhood, and was a happy and be- 
loved wife, surrounded by friends and the re- 
finements of a beautiful home, and all that 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 107 

makes life sweet and desirable. Both of these 
children God took, one soon after the other. 
The father, a man of most tender affections, 
and yet of implicit faith in God, uttered no 
murmur when called to stand at the graves of 
his beloved ones ; and yet his heart cries out 
for interpretation. 

He writes: " In one of your books 1 I find 
these words : ' Sometimes our best beloved are 
taken away from us, and our hearts are left 
bleeding, as a vine bleeds when a green branch 
is cut from it. . . . Here it is that Christian 
faith comes in, putting such interpretation and 
explanation upon the painful things, that we 
may be ready to accept them with confidence, 
even with rejoicing. ... A strong, abiding 
confidence that all the trials, sorrows, and losses 
of our lives are parts of our Father's husbandry, 
ought to silence every question, quiet every 
fear, and give peace and restful assurance to 
our hearts in all their pain. We cannot know 
the reason for the painful strokes, but we know 
that he who holds the pruning-knife is our 

1 " Practical Religion," page 107 



108 THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 

Father. That ought always to be enough for 
us to know.' " 

Having quoted these words, he continues : 
j< Now I do not question the Father's hus- 
bandry. I would also * silence every question ' 
concerning his wisdom and his love. I would 
not doubt them for a moment. When I found 
that my only son, my pride and my staff, must 
die, I prayed with such strong crying and tears 
as only they can know who are in like circum- 
stances, yet feeling that I could give back to 
God what he had lent me without a murmur. 
By his help, I believe even the slightest mur- 
mur has been repressed concerning the painful 
things, and that in some measure I have been 
ready to accept them with confidence, even with 
rejoicing. But my faith has not come in, as 
you suggest, to put i such interpretation and ex- 
planation* upon them, as perhaps I ought to do. 
Why has God thus dealt with me ? Why was 
a double stroke necessary ? Is his dealing with 
me purely disciplinary ? What are the lessons 
he would teach me ? How am I to test myself 
as to whether his purpose in afflicting me has 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 109 

been accomplished ? Or am I not anxiously to 
inquire concerning the specific lessons, but 
rather to let him show in due time what he 
designed? Such questions multiply without 
answer." 

Has not this writer in his own last sugges- 
tion stated what should be done by those who 
are perplexed with questions as to the interpre- 
tation of sorrow? They should not anxiously 
inquire concerning the specific lessons, but 
rather let God show in due time what he de- 
signed. No doubt every sorrow has a mission. 
It comes to us, as God's messenger, with a mes- 
sage. If we will welcome it reverently, and be 
still while it gives its message, no doubt we 
shall receive some benediction. 

Yet we must look at this whole matter care- 
fully and wisely. We are in danger of thinking 
only of ourselves, and of the effect upon us and 
our life of the griefs that smite us. We think 
too often of our bereavements, for example, as 
if God took away the friend, ending his life, just 
to chasten or punish us. But we have no right 
to take so narrow a view of God's design in 



HO THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 

the removal of loved ones from our side. His 
purpose concerns them as well as us. They are 
called away because their work on earth is done, 
and higher service in other spheres awaits them. 
To them death is gain, promotion, translation. 
The event itself, in its primary significance, 
is a joyous and blessed one. The sorrow which 
we experience in their removal is but an inci- 
dent. God cannot take them home to glory 
from our side, without giving us pain. But we 
must not reverse this order and think that the 
primary end of the calling away of our beloved 
ones is to chasten us, or to cause us to suffer. 
No doubt there is blessing for us as well as for 
them in their leaving us, since all things work 
together for good to them that love God ; but 
we unduly exaggerate our own importance when 
we think of God as laying a beautiful life low in 
death merely to teach us some lesson or give to 
us some blessing. 

When we look at our bereavements in this 
light, and think of what death means to our 
beloved ones who have been taken from us, we 
find new comfort in the thought of their immor- 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW, III 

tality, their release from suffering and tempta- 
tion, and their full blessedness with Christ. It 
is selfish for us to forget this in the absorption 
of our own grief. Should we not be willing to 
endure loss and pain that those dear to us may 
receive gain and blessing ? 

Even in life's relationships on the earth we 
are continually taught the same lesson. Par- 
ents must give up their children, losing them 
out of the home nest, that they may go forth 
into the world to take up life's duties for them- 
selves. Then also the separation is painful, but 
it is borne in the sweet silence of self-denying 
love. We give up our friends when they are 
called from our side to accept other and higher 
places. Life is full of such separations, and we 
are taught that it is our duty to think of others, 
bearing our own loss in patience for their sake a 
Does not the same law of love "that seeketh 
not its own " apply when our beloved ones are 
called up higher? 

Of lessons to be learned in sorrow the first 
always is submission. We are told even of our 
Lord that he "learned obedience by the things 



112 THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 

which he suffered." This is life's great, all-inclu« 
sive lesson. When we have learned this fully, 
perfectly, the work of sanctification in us is 
complete. 

Then another lesson in all sorrow comes in 
the softening and enriching of the life in order 
to greater personal helpfulness. It is sad for 
us if for any cause we miss this blessed out- 
come of grief and pain. Christ suffered in all 
points that he might be fitted for his work of 
helping and saving men. God teaches us in our 
sorrow what he would have us tell others in 
their time of trial. Those who suffer patiently 
and sweetly go forth with new messages for 
others, and with new power to comfort. 

Beyond these two wide, general lessons of all 
sorrow, it usually is not wise to press our ques* 
tion, "Why is it?" It is better for us so to 
relate ourselves to God in every time of trial, 
that we may not hinder the coming to us of any 
blessing he may send, but on the other hand, 
may receive with quiet, sweet welcome whatever 
teaching, correction, revealing, purifying, or 
quickening he would give us. Surely this is 



THE INTERPRETATION OF SORROW. 113 

better far than that we should anxiously inquire 
why God afflicts us, why he sent the sorrow to 
us, just what he wants it to do for us. We 
must trust God to work out in us what he wants 
the grief to do for us. We need not trouble 
ourselves to know what he is doing. 

Mercifully our old duties come again aftet 
sorrow just as before, and we must take these 
all up, only putting into them more heart, more 
reverence toward God, more gentleness and 
love toward man. As we go on we shall know 
what God meant the grief to do for us ; or if 
not in this world, we shall in that home of 
Light, where all mystery shall be explained, 
and where we shall see love's lesson plain and 
clear in all life's strange writing. There is no 
doubt that sorrow always brings us an oppor- 
tunity for blessing. Then we must remember 
that in this world alone can we get the good 
that can come to us only through pain, for in 
the life beyond death there is to be no sorrow, 
no tears. An old Eastern proverb says, " Spread 
wide thy skirts when heaven is raining gold." 
Heaven is always raining gold when we are sit- 



1 1 4 THE INTER PRE TA TION OF S ORR O W. 

ting under the shadow of the cross. We should 
diligently improve the opportunity, and learn the 
lessons he would teach and get the blessings 
he would give, for the time is short. 

** But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross, 
Thou wilt not find it in this world again, 
Nor in another ; here, and here alone, 
Is given thee to suffer for God's sake. 
In other worlds we shall more perfectly 
Serve him and love him, praise him, work for him. 
Grow near and nearer him with all delight ; 
But there we shall not any more be called 
To suffer, which is our appointment here." 



CHAPTER XL 

OTHER PEOPLE. 

M We need — e^ch and all — to be needed, 
To feel we have something to give 
Towards soothing the moan of earth's hunger; 

And we know that then only we live 
When we feed one another, as we have been fed 
From the hand that gives body and spirit their bread." 

— Lucy Larcom, 

There are other people. We are not the 
only ones. Some of the others live close to us, 
and some farther away. We stand in certain 
relations to these other people. They have 
claims upon us. We owe them duties, serv- 
ices, love. We cannot cut ourselves off from 
them, from any of them, saying that they are 
nothing to us. We cannot rid ourselves of 
obligations to them and say we owe them 
nothing. So inexorable is this relation to 
others that in all the broad earth there is not 
an individual who has no right to come to us 

115 



Il6 OTHER PEOPLE. 

with his needs, claiming at our hand the 
ministry of love. The other people are our 
brothers, and there is not one of them that we 
have a right to despise, or neglect, or hurt, or 
thrust away from our door. 

We ought to train ourselves to think of the 
other people. We may not leave them out of 
any of the plans that we make. We must 
think of their interests and good when we are 
thinking of our own. They have rights as well 
as ourselves, and we must think of these when 
asserting our own. No man may set his fence 
a hair's breadth over the line on his neighbor's 
ground. No man may gather even a head of 
his neighbor's wheat, or a cluster of grapes 
from his neighbor's vine. No man may enter 
his neighbor's door unbidden. No man may 
do anything that will harm his neighbor. 
Other people have inalienable rights which we 
may not invade. 

We owe other people more than their rights ; 
we owe them love. To some of them it is not 
hard to pay this debt. They are lovable and 
winsome. They are thoroughly respectable. 



OTHER PEOPLE. U7 

They are congenial spirits, giving us in return 
quite as much as we can give them. It is 
natural to love these and be very kindly and 
gentle to them. But we have no liberty of 
selection in this broad duty of loving other 
people. We may not choose whom we shall 
love if we claim to be Christians. The Mas- 
ter's teaching is inexorable : " If ye love them 
that love you, what thank have ye ? for even 
sinners love those that love them. And if ye 
do good to them that do good to you, what 
thank have ye ? for even sinners do the same. 
And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to 
receive, what thank have ye ? even sinners 
lend to sinners, to receive again as much. But 
love your enemies, and do them good, and lend, 
never despairing; and your reward shall be 
great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High; 
for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil." 
The good Samaritan is our Lord's answer to 
the question, " Who is my neighbor ? " and 
the good Samaritan's neighbor was a bitter 
enemy, who, in other circumstances, would have 
spurned him from his presence. Other people 



Il8 OTHER PEOPLE. 

may not be beautiful in their character, nor 
congenial in their habits, manners, modes of 
life, or disposition ; they may even be unkind 
to us, unjust, unreasonable, in strict justice 
altogether undeserving of our favor ; yet if we 
persist in being called Christians ourselves we 
owe them the love that thinketh no evil, that 
seeketh not its own, that beareth all things, 
endureth all things, and never faileth. 

No doubt it is hard to love the other people 
who hate us. It is not so hard just to let them 
alone, to pass them by without harming them, 
or even to pray for them in a way ; but to 
love them — that is a sore test. We are apt 
to ask : — 

** Dear Lord, will it not do, 

If we return not wrong for wrong, 
And neither love nor hate? 

But love — O Lord, our souls are far from strong. 
And love is such a tender, horne-nursed dove — 
How can we, Lord, our enemies bless and love ? 

*' Fasting — Oh, one could fast — 

And praying — one could most pathetic pray; 
But love our enemies ! Dear Lord, 

Is there not unto thee some easier way — 



OTHER PEOPLE. 1 1 9 

Some way through churchly service, song, or psalm, 
Or ritual grand, to reach thy heaven's calm ? " 

But there comes no answer of Christly indul- 
gence to such questions. Other people, though 
they be our enemies, are not thus taken out of 
the circle of those to whom we owe love. Our 
part is always pictured for us in the example of 
the good Samaritan. 

That is, we owe other people service. Serv- 
ice goes with loving. We cannot love truly 
and not serve. Love without serving is but an 
empty sentiment, a poor mockery. God so 
loved the world that he gave. Love always 
gives. If it will not give it is not love. It is 
measured always by what it will give. The 
needs of other people are therefore divine com- 
mands to us, which we. dare not disregard or 
disobey. To refuse to bless a brother who 
stands before us in any kind of want is as great 
a sin as to break one of the positive command- 
ments of the Decalogue. Indeed, in a sense, 
it is the breaking of the whole second table of 
the commandments — the sense of which is, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself/' 



120 OTHER PEOPLE. 

We like to think there is no sin in mere not 
doing. But Jesus, in his wonderful picture of 
the Last Judgment, makes men's condemna- 
tion turn on not doing the things they ought 
to have done. They have simply not fed the 
hungry, not clothed the naked, not visited the 
sick, not blessed the prisoner. To make these 
sins of neglect appear still more grievous, our 
Lord makes a personal matter of each case, 
puts himself in the place of the sufferer who 
needs it and is not cared for, and tells us that 
all neglects to give needed kindness to any are 
shown to him. This divine word gives a tre- 
mendous interest to other people, who are 
brought providentially into the sphere of our 
life, so that their wants of whatever kind may 
make appeal to our sympathy and kindness. 
To neglect them is to neglect Christ. He 
sends them to us. They represent him. To 
turn them away is to turn him away. 

This matter of serving has multitudinous 
forms. Sometimes it is poverty that stands 
at our gate, and money help is wanted. A 
thousand times more frequently, however, it 



OTHER PEOPLE. 121 

is not money, but something else more precious, 
that we must give. It may be loving sympa- 
thy. Sorrow is before us. Another's heart 
is breaking. Money would be of no use ; it 
would be only a bitter mockery to offer it. But 
we can hold to the neighbor's lips a cup of the 
wine of love, filled out of our own heart, which 
will give new strength to the sufferer. Or it 
is the anguish of a life struggle, a human 
Gethsemane, beside which we are called to 
watch. We can give no actual aid — the soul 
must fight its battles alone ; but we can be as 
the angel that ministered in our Lord's Geth- 
semane, imparting strength, and helping the 
weary struggler to win the victory. 

The world is very full of sorrow and trial, 
and we cannot live among our fellow-men and 
be true without sharing their loads. If we are 
happy we must hold the lamp of our happiness 
so that its beams will fall upon the shadowed 
heart. If we have no burden it is our duty to 
put our shoulders under the load of others. 
Selfishness must die or else our own heart's 
life must be frozen within us. We soon learn 



122 OTHER PEOPLE. 

that we cannot live for ourselves and be Chris 
tians ; that the blessings that are given to us 
are really for other people, and that we are 
only God's ministers, to carry them in Christ's 
name to those for whom they are intended. 

We begin to felicitate ourselves upon some 
special prosperity, and the next moment some 
human need knocks at our door, and we must 
share our good things with a suffering brother 
We may build up our fine theories of taking 
care of ourselves, of living for the future, ol 
laying up in the summer of prosperity for the 
winter of adversity, of providing for old age or 
for our children ; but ofttimes all these frugal 
and economic plans have to yield to the 
exigencies of human need. The love that 
seeketh not its own plays havoc with life's hard 
logic, and with the plans of mere self-interest. 
We cannot say that anything is our own when 
our brother is suffering for what we can give. 

" Herein is love: to strip the shoulders bare, 
ff need be, that a frailer one may wear 
A mantle to protect it from the storm; 
To bear the frost-king's breath so one be warm; 



OTHER PEOPLE. 1 23 

To crush the tears it would be sweet to shed, 
And smile. so others may have joy instead. 

" Herein is love : to daily sacrifice 
The hope that to the bosom closest lies ; 
To mutely bear reproach and suffer wrong, 
Nor lift the voice to show where both belong; 
Nay, now, nor tell it e'en to God above — 
Herein is love indeed, herein is love." 

Not a day passes in the commonest ex 
periences of life, in which other people do not 
stand before us with their needs, appealing to 
us for some service which we may render to 
them. It may be only ordinary courtesy, the 
gentle kindness of the home circle, the patient 
treatment of neighbors or customers in busi- 
ness relations, the thoughtful showing of in- 
terest in old people or in children. On all 
sides the lives of others touch ours, and we 
cannot do just as we please, thinking only of 
ourselves, and our own comfort and good, unless 
we choose to be false to all the instincts of 
humanity, and all the requirements of the law 
of Christian love. We must think continually 
of other people. 



124 OTHER PEOPLE. 

We may not seek our own pleasure in any 
way without asking whether it will harm or mar 
the comfort of some other one. For example, 
we must think of other people's convenience in 
the exercise of our own liberty and in the indul- 
gence of our own tastes and desires. It may 
be pleasant for us to lie late in bed in the morn- 
ing, and we may be inclined to regard the habit 
as only a little amiable self-indulgence. But 
there is a more serious side to the practice. It 
breaks the harmonious flow of the household 
life. It causes confusion in the family plans 
for the day. It makes extra work for faithful 
housekeepers or servants. It sorely tries the 
patience of love. 

The other day an important committee of 
fifteen was kept waiting for ten minutes for one 
tardy member, whose presence was necessary 
before anything could be done. At last he 
came sauntering in without even an apology for 
having caused fourteen busy men a loss of time 
that to them was very valuable, besides having 
put a sore strain on their patience and good 
nature. We have no right to forget or disre- 



^ OTHER PEOPLE. 125 

gard the convenience of others. A conscien- 
tious application of the Golden Rule would cure 
us of all such carelessness. 

These are but illustrations of the way other 
people impinge upon our life. They are so 
close to us that we cannot move without touch- 
ing them. We cannot speak but that our words 
affect others. We cannot act in the simplest 
things without first thinking whether what we 
are about to do will help or hurt others. We 
are but one of a great family, and we dare not 
live for ourselves. We must never forget that 
there are other people. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 

" It must be done by both ; God never without me, 
I never without God." 

—Johannes Scheffler, 

" Faithful servant " will be the commends 
tion on the judgment-day of those who have 
lived well on the earth. Not great deeds will 
be commended, but faithfulness. The smallest 
ministries will rank with the most conspicuous, 
if they are all that the weak hands could do. 
Indeed, the widow's two mites were more in 
value than the rich men's large coins. 

" Two mites, two drops, but all her house and land 
Fell from an earnest heart but trembling hand ; 
The others' wanton wealth foamed high and brave ; 
The others cast away, she only gave. 1 ' 

Yet faithfulness as a measure of requirement 
is not something that can be reached without 
effort. It does not furnish a pillow for indo 

126 



THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 1 27 

lence. It is not a letting down of obligation to 
a low standard, to make life easy. It is indeed 
a lofty measurement. " Thou hast been faith- 
ful " is the highest possible commendation. 

It may not be amiss to look a little at the 
meaning of the word as a standard of moral 
requirement. In general, it implies the doing 
of all our work as well as we can. All our 
work includes, of course, our business, our trade, 
our household duties, all our daily task-work, as 
well as our praying, our Bible-reading, and our 
obeying of the moral law. We must not make 
the mistake of thinking that there is no relig- 
ion in the way we do the common work of our 
trade or of our household, or our work on the 
farm, or in the mill or store. The faithfulness 
Christ requires and commends takes in all these 
things. Ofttimes, too, it would be easier to be 
faithful in some great trial, requiring sublimity 
of courage, than in the little unpicturesque 
duties of an ordinary day. Says Phillips Brooks : 
" You picture to yourself the beauty of bravery 
and steadfastness. You let your imagination 
wander in delight over the memory of martyrs 



128 THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 

who have died for truth. And then some little, 
wretched, disagreeable duty comes, which is 
your martyrdom, the lamp of your oil ; and if 
you will not do it, how your oil is spilt ! How 
flat and thin and unilluminated your sentiment 
about the martyrs runs out over your self-indul- 
gent life ! " 

Lovers of the violin are familiar with the 
name of Stradivarius, the old violin-maker of 
Cremona. He has been dead nearly two hun- 
dred years, and his violins now bring fabulous 
prices. George Eliot, in one of her poems, puts 
some noble words into the mouth of the old 
man. Speaking of the masters who will play 
on his violins, he says : — 

" While God gives them skill, 
I give them instruments to play upon, 
God choosing me to help him." 

Referring to another violin-maker, his rival, 

he says : — 

" But were his the best, 
He could not work for two. 
My work is mine, 
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked, 



THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 1 29 

I should rob God — since he is fullest good — 

Leaving a blank instead of violins. 

I say, not God himself can make man's best 

Without best men to help him. 

****** 

'Tis God gives skill, 

But not without men's hands. 

He could not make 

Antonio Stradivari's violins 

Without Antonio." 

At first reading these words may indeed seem 
heretical and irreverent, but they are not. It 
is true, indeed, that even God cannot do our 
work without us, without our skill, our faithful- 
ness. If we fail or do our little duty negli- 
gently, there will be a blank or a blur where 
there ought to have been something beautiful. 
As another says, "The universe is not quite 
perfect without my work well done." 

One man is a carpenter. God has called him 
to that work. It is his duty to build houses, 
and to build them well. That is, he is required 
to be a good carpenter, to do the very best 
work he can possibly do. If, therefore, he 
does careless work, imperfect, dishonest, slurred. 



130 THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 

slighted work, he is robbing God, leaving only 
bad carpentering where he ought to have left 
good. For even God himself will not build 
the carpenter's houses without the carpenter. 
Or, here is a mother in a home. Her children 
are about her, with their needs. Her home 
requires her skill, her taste, her refinement, 
her toil and care. It is her calling to be a 
good mother, and to make a true home for 
her household. Her duty is to do always her 
very best to make her home beautiful, bright, 
happy, a fit place for her children to grow up 
in. Faithfulness requires that she do always 
such service as a mother, that Jesus shall say 
of her home-making, " She hath done what 
she could." To do less than her best is to 
fail in fidelity. Suppose that her hand should 
slack, that she should grow negligent, would 
she not clearly be robbing God ? For even 
God cannot make a beautiful home for her 
children without her. 

So we may apply the principle to all kinds 
of work. The faithfulness which God requires 
must reach to everything we do, to the way 



THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 131 

the child gets its lessons and recites them, to 
the way the dressmaker and the tailor sew 
their seams, to the way the blacksmith welds 
the iron, and shoes the horse, to the way the 
plumber puts the pipes into the new building 
and looks after the drainage, to the way the 
carpenter does his work on the house, to the 
way the bridge-builder swings the bridge over 
the stream, to the way the clerk represents 
the goods, and measures or weighs them. " Be 
thou faithful " is the word that rings from 
heaven in every ear, God's word for the doing 
of every piece of work that any one does. How 
soon it would put a stop to all dishonesty, all 
fraud, all scant work, all false weights and meas- 
ures, all shams, all neglects or slightings of 
duty, were this lesson only learned and prac- 
ticed everywhere ! 

"It does not matter," people say, "whether 
I do my little work well or not. Of course I 
must not steal, nor lie, nor commit forgery, 
nor break the Sabbath. These are moral 
things. But there is no sin in my sewing up 
this seam carelessly, or in my using bad mortar 



132 THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 

in this wall, or in my putting inferior timber 
in this house, or a piece of flawed iron in 
this bridge. " But we need to learn that the 
moral law applies everywhere, just as really to 
carpentry, or blacksmithing, or tailoring, as to 
Sabbath-keeping. We never can get away 
from this law. 

Besides, it does matter, for our neighbor's 
sake, as well as for the honor of God's law, 
how we do our work. The bricklayer does 
negligent work on the walls of the flue he is 
putting in, and one night, years afterward, a 
spark creeps through the crevice and reaches 
a wooden beam that lies there, and soon the 
house is in flames and perhaps precious lives 
perish. The bricklayer was unfaithful. The 
foundryworker, in casting the great iron sup- 
ports for a bridge, is unwatchful for an instant, 
and a bubble of air makes a flaw. It is buried 
away in the heart of the beam and escapes 
detection. One day, years later, there is a 
terrible disaster. A great railroad bridge 
gives way beneath the weight of an express 
train and hundreds of lives are lost. In the 



THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 1 33 

inquest it is testified that a slight flaw in one 
beam was the cause of the awful calamity 
which hurled so many lives into eternity. The 
foundry workman was unfaithful. 

These are but suggestions of the duty and of 
its importance. No work can be of so little 
moment that it matters not whether it be done 
faithfully or not. Unfaithfulness in the small- 
est things is unfaithfulness, and God is grieved, 
and possibly sometime, somewhere, disaster 
may come as the consequence of the neglect. 
On the other hand, faithfulness is pleasing to 
God, though it be only in the sweeping well of 
a room, or the doing neatly of the smallest 
things in household care. Then faithfulness is 
far-reaching in its influence. The universe is 
not quite complete without each one's little 
work well done. 

The self-culture that there is in the mere 
habit of faithfulness is in itself a rich reward 
for all our striving. It is a great thing to train 
ourselves to do always our best, to do as nearly 
perfect work as possible. Said Michael Angelo : 
" Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, 



134 THE BLESSING OF FAITHFULNESS. 

as the endeavor to create something perfect; 
for God is perfection, and whoever strives for 
it, strives for something that is Godlike." The 
habit, unyieldingly persisted in, of doing every- 
thing with the most scrupulous conscientious- 
ness, builds up in the one who so lives a noble 
and beautiful character. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

"Souls are built as temples are, — 
Based on truth's eternal law, 
Sure and steadfast, without flaw, 
Through the sunshine, through the snows, 
Up and on the building goes; 
Every fair thing finds its place, 
Every hard thing lends a grace, 
Every hand may make or mar." 

We read of the temple of Solomon, when it 
was in building, that it was built of stone made 
ready in the quarry, so that neither hammer nor 
axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house 
while it went up. 

" No workman's steel, no ponderous axes rung; 
Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric sprung." 

So it is that the great work of spiritual tem- 
ple-building goes on continually in this world. 
We are all really silent builders. The kingdom 

135 



I36 WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

of God cometh not with observation. The 
divine Spirit works in silence, changing men's 
hearts, transforming lives, comforting sorrow, 
kindling hope in darkened bosoms, washing 
scarlet souls white as snow. The preacher 
may speak with the voice of a Boanerges, but 
the power that reaches hearts is not the preach- 
er's noise ; silently the divine voice whispers in 
the soul its secret of conviction, or of hope, or 
of strength. The Lord is not in the storm, in 
the earthquake, in the fire, but in the sound of 
gentleness, the spirit's whisper, that breathes 
through the soul. 

Perhaps the best work any of us do in this 
world is that which we do without noise. 
Words give forth sound, but it is not the 
sounds that do good, that brighten sad faces as 
people listen, that change tears to laughter, 
that stimulate hope, that put courage into faint- 
ing hearts, — it is not the noise of our words, 
but the thoughts which the words carry. 
Words are but the chattering messengers that 
bear the sealed messages ; and it is the mes- 
sages that help and comfort. We may make 



WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 137 

noise as we work, but it is not our noise that 
builds up what we leave in beauty behind us. 
It is life that builds, and life is silent. The 
force that works in our homes is a silent force, 
— mother-love, father-love, patience, gentleness, 
prayer, truth, the influences of divine grace. 

It is the same in the building up of personal 
character in each of us. There may be a great 
deal of noise all about us, but it is in silence 
that we grow. From a thousand sources come 
the little blocks that are laid upon the walls, — 
the lessons we get from others, the influences 
friends exert upon us, the truths our reading 
puts into our minds, the impressions life leaves 
upon us, the inspirations we receive from the 
divine Spirit — ever the builders are at work on 
these characters of ours, but they work silently, 
without noise of hammer or axe. 

There is another suggestion. Down in the dark 
quarries, under the city, the men wrought, cut- 
ting, hewing, polishing, the stones. They hung 
their little lamps on the walls, and with their 
hammers and chisels they hewed away at the 
great blocks. Months and years passed; then 



138 WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

one day there was a grand dedication, and there 
in the glorious sunshine all the secret, obscure 
work of those years was seen in its final beauty, 
amid the joy of a nation. If the men who had 
wrought in the quarries were present that day, 
what a joy it must have been to them to think 
of their work in preparing the great stones for 
their place in the magnificent building ! 

Here is a parable. This world is the quarry. 
We are toiling away in the darkness. We can- 
not see what good is ever to come out of our 
lonely, painful, obscure toil. Yet some day our 
quarry-work will be manifested in the glory of 
heaven. We are preparing materials now and 
here for the temple of the great King, which in 
heaven is slowly rising through the ages. No 
noise of hammer or axe is heard in all that won- 
drous building, because the stones are all shaped 
and polished and made entirely ready in this 
world. 

We are the stones, and the world is God's 
quarry. The stones for the temple were cut 
out of the great rock in the dark underground 
cavern. They were rough and shapeless. Then 
they were dressed into form, and this required a 



WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 1 39 

great deal of cutting, hammering, and chiselling. 
Without this stern, sore work on the stones, not 
one of them could ever have filled a place in the 
temple. At last when they were ready they 
were lifted out of the dark quarry and carried 
up to the mountain-top, where the temple was 
rising, and were laid in their place. 

* We are stones in the quarry as yet. When * 
we accepted Christ we were cut from the great 
mass of rock. But we were yet rough and un- 
shapely, not fit for heaven. Before we can be 
ready for our place in the heavenly temple we 
must be hewn and shaped. The hammer must 
do its work, breaking off the roughnesses. The 
chisel must be used, carving and polishing our 
lives into beauty. This work is done in the 
many processes of life. Every sinful thing, 
every fault in our character, is a rough place in 
the stone, which must be chiselled off. All the 
crooked lines must be straightened. Our lives 
must be cut and hewn until they conform to the 
perfect standard of divine truth. 

Quarry-work is not always pleasant. If stones 
had hearts and sensibilities, they would some- 



I40 WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

times cry out in sore pain as they feel the ham* 
mer strokes and the deep cutting of the chisel. 
Yet the workman must not heed their cries and 
withdraw his hand, else they would at last be 
thrown aside as worthless blocks, never to be 
built into the place of honor. 

We are not stones ; we have hearts and sensi- 
bilities, and we do cry out ofttimes as the ham- 
mer smites away the roughnesses in our charac- 
ter. But we must yield to the sore work and let it 
go on, or we shall never have our place as living 
stones in Christ's beautiful temple. We must 
not wince under the sharp chiselling of sorrow. 
Says Dr. T. T. Munger : — 

" When God afflicts thee, think he hews a rugged stone 
Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown." 

There is still another suggestion from this 
singular temple-building. Every individual life 
has its quarries where are shaped the blocks 
which afterward are built into character, or 
which take form in acts. Schools are the 
quarries, where, through years of patient study, 
the materials for life are prepared, the mind is 



WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 141 

disciplined, habits are formed, knowledge is 
gained, and power is stored. Later, in active 
life, the temple rises without noise of hammer 
or axe. Homes are quarries where children are 
trained, where moral truth is lodged in the 
heart, where the elements of character are 
hewn out like fair stones, to appear in the life 
in after days, when it grows up among men. 

Then there are the thought-quarries back of 
what people see in every human life. Men must 
be silent thinkers before their words or deeds can 
have either great beauty or power. Extempo- 
raneousness anywhere is of small value. Glib, 
easy talkers, who are always ready to speak on 
any subject, who require no time for preparation, 
may go on chattering forever, but their talk is 
only chatter. The words that are worth hearing 
come out of thought-quarries where they have 
been wrought ofttimes in struggle and anguish. 
Father Ryan, in one of the most exquisite of his 
poems, writes of the " valley of silence " where 
he prepares the songs he afterwards sings : — 

" In the hush of the valley of silence 
I dream all the songs that I sing; 



142 WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

And the music floats down the dim valley 
'Till each finds a word for awing, 

That to hearts, like the dove of the deluge, 
A message of peace they may bring." 

So it is of all great thoughts. Thinkers brood 
long in the silence and then come forth and 
their eloquence sways us. So it is with art. 
We look at a fine picture and our hearts are 
warmed by its wondrous beauty. But do we 
know the story of the picture ? Years and 
years of thought and of tireless toil lie back of 
its enrapturing beauty. Or here is a book 
which charms you, which thrills and inspires 
you. Great thoughts lie on its pages. Do you 
know the book's story ? The author lived, 
struggled, toiled, suffered, wept, that he might 
write the words which now help you. Back of 
every good life-thought which blesses men, lies 
a dark quarry where the thought was born and 
shaped into the beauty of form which makes it 
a blessing to the world. 

Or here is a noble and beautiful character. 
Goodness appears natural to it. It seems easy 
for the man to be noble and to do noble things. 



WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 143 

But again the quarry is back of the temple. 
Each one's heart is the quarry out of which 
comes all that the person builds into his life. 
" As he thinketh in his heart so is he." Every- 
thing that appears in our lives comes out of our 
hearts. All our acts are first thoughts. The 
artist's picture, the poet's poem, the singer's 
song, the architect's building, are thoughts be- 
fore they are wrought out into forms of beauty. 
All dispositions, tempers, feelings, words, and 
acts start in the heart. If the workmen had 
quarried faulty stones in the caverns, the temple 
would have been spoiled. An evil heart, with 
stained thoughts, impure imaginings, blurred 
feelings, can never build up a fair and lovely 
character. 

We need to guard our heart-quarry with all 
diligence, since out of it are the issues of life. 
The thoughts build the life and make the char- 
acter. White thoughts rear up a beautiful fabric 
before God and man. Soiled thoughts pile up 
a stained life, without beauty or honor. We 
should look well, therefore, to our heart-quarry, 
where the work goes on in the darkness without 



144 WITHOUT AXE OR HAMMER. 

ceasing. If all be right there we need give little 
concern to the building of character. Diligent 
heart-keeping yields a life unspotted from the 
world. 

A little child had been reading the beatitudes, 
and was asked which of the qualities named in 
them she most desired. " I would rather be pure 
in heart," she said. When asked the reason for 
her choice, she answered : " If I could but have 
a pure heart, I should then possess all the other 
qualities of the beatitudes in the one." The 
child was right. A pure heart will build a beau- 
tiful life, a fit temple for Christ. Thinking over 
God's holy thoughts after him will make us like 
God. Thinking habitually about Christ, Christ's 
beauty will come into our souls and shine in our 
faces. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

" We can best minister to him by helping them 
Who dare not touch his hallowed garment's hem; 
Their lives are even as ours — one piece, one plan. 
Him know we not, him shall we never know, 
Till we behold him in the least of these 
Who suffer or who sin. In sick souls he 
Lies bound and sighing, asks our sympathies; 
Their grateful eyes thy benison bestow, 
Brother and Lord, — 'Ye did it unto me.'" 

— Lucy Larcom. 

If Christ were here, we say, we would do 

many things for him. The women who love 

him would gladly minister to him as did the 

women who followed him from Galilee. The 

men who are his friends would work to help 

him in any ways he might direct. The children 

who are trying to please him would run errands 

for him. We all say we would be delighted to 

serve him if only he would come again to our 

world and visit our homes. But we can do 

145 



I46 DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

things for him just as really as if he were here 
again in human form. 

One way of doing this is by obeying him. He 
is our Lord. Nothing pleases him so well as 
our obedience. It is told of a great philosopher 
that a friend called one day to see him, and was 
entertained by the philosopher's little daughter 
till her father came in. The friend supposed 
that the child of so wise a man would be learn- 
ing something very deep. So he asked her, 
" What is your father teaching you ? " The 
little maid looked up into his face with her 
clear eyes and said, " Obedience." That is the 
one great lesson our Lord is teaching us. He 
wants us to learn obedience. If we obey him 
always we shall always be doing things for him. 

We do things for Christ which we do through 
love to him. Even obedience without love does 
not please him. But the smallest services we 
can render, if love inspire them, he accepts. 
Thus we can make the commonest tasks of our 
lives holy ministries, as sacred as what the 
angels do. There is a legend of a monk who 
painted in an old convent-cell pictures of mar- 



DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 147 

tyrs and holy saints and of the sweet Christ- 
face with the crown of thorns. Men called his 
pictures only daubs. 

" One night the poor monk mused, * Could I but render 
Honor to Christ as other painters do — 
Were but my skill as great as is the tender 
Love that inspires me when his cross I view.' 

** ' But no ; 'tis vain I toil and strive in sorrow ; 
What man so scorns still less can He admire ; 
My life's work is all valueless ; to-morrow 
I'll cast my ill-wrought pictures in the fire.' 

" He raised his eyes within his cell — O wonder ! 
There stood a Visitor; thorn-crowned was He; 
And a sweet voice the silence rent asunder: 
* I scorn no work that's done for love of me.' 

"And round the walls the paintings shone resplendent 
With lights and colors to this world unknown, 
A perfect beauty and a hue transcendent, 
That never yet on mortal canvas shone." 

There is a beautiful meaning in the old leg- 
end. Christ scorns no work that is done for 
love of him. Most of us have much drudgery 
in our lives, but even this we can make glorious 
by doing it through love for Christ. 



148 DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

Things we do for others in Christ's name, are 
done for him. We all remember that wonder- 
ful "inasmuch" in the twenty-fifth of Matthew. 
If we find the sick one, or the poor one, and go 
and minister, as we may be able, as unto the 
Lord, the deed is accepted as if done to him 
in person. Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, in one of 
her beautiful poems, tells of a weary sister 
who grieved sorely because, as it seemed to her, 
she had not been able to do any work for Christ. 
By a mother's dying bed she had promised to 
care for her little sister, and her work for the 
child so filled her hands that she had not time 
for anything else. As she grieved thus once, 
the little sister sleeping beside her stirred and 
told her of a sweet, strange dream she had had. 
She thought her sister was sitting sad because 
the King had bidden each one to bring him a gift. 

" And in my dream I saw you there, 
And heard you say, * No hands can bear 
A gift, that are so filled with care.' 

"*What care?' the King said, and he smiled 
To hear you answer, wailing wild, 
*I only toil to feed a child.' 



DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 1 49 

"And then with such a look divine 
('Twas that awaked me with its shine), 
He whispered, * But the child is mine.' " 

There are many for whom this little story- 
poem should have sweet comfort. There are 
fathers and mothers who find it hard to provide 
for their children. It takes all their time and 
strength, and sometimes they say, "I cannot 
do any work for Christ, because it takes every 
moment to earn bread and clothing for my 
little ones, and to care for them. ,, But Jesus 
whispers, " Yes ; yet your children are mine, 
and what you do for them you do for me." 

There is in a home an invalid who requires 
all the time and thought of another member of 
the household in loving attention. It may be 
an aged parent needing the help of a child ; 
it may be a child, crippled, blind, or sick, need- 
ing all a parent's care ; or it may be a brother 
broken in health on whom a sister is called to 
wait continually with patient love. And some- 
times those who are required thus to spend 
their days and nights in ministry for others 
feel that their lives count for nothing in work 



150 DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

for Christ. They hear the appeals for laborers 
and for service, but cannot respond. Their 
hands are already filled. Yet Jesus whispers, 
"These for whom you are toiling, caring, and 
spending time and strength are mine, and in 
doing for them you are doing for me just as 
acceptable work as are those who are toiling 
without distraction or hindrance in the great 
open field." 

Sometimes the work we do for Christ with 
purest love fails, or seems to fail of result. 
Nothing appears to come of it. There are 
whole lifetimes of godly people that seem to 
yield nothing. A word ought to be said about 
this kind of doing for Christ. We are to set it 
down as true without exception, that no work 
wrought in Christ's name and with love for him 
is ever lost. What we, in our limited, short- 
sighted vision, planned to do may not be accom- 
plished, but God's purpose goes on in every 
consecrated life, in every true deed done. The 
disciples thought that Mary's costly ointment 
was wasted. So it seemed ; but this world has 
been a little sweeter ever since the breaking of 



DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 151 

the vase that let the perfume escape into its 
common air. So it is with many things that 
are done, and many lives that are lived. They 
seem to fail, and there is nothing on the earth 
to show where they have been. Yet somehow 
the stock of human happiness is larger and the 
world is a little better. 

Our work for Christ that fails in what we 
intended may yet leave a blessing in some other 
way. A faithful Bible-class teacher through 
many months visited a young man, a member 
of her class, in sickness. She read the Bible 
to him and sang sweet hymns and prayed by 
his bedside. He was not a Christian and she 
hoped that he would be led to Christ. But at 
length he recovered and went out again, 
unchanged, or even more indifferent than ever 
to his spiritual interests. All the faithful 
teacher's work seemed to have been in vain. 
Then she learned that a frail, invalid girl, living 
in an adjoining house, had been brought to 
Christ through the loving work done for the 
careless scholar. The songs sung by the sick 
man's bedside, and which seemed to have left 



152 DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

no blessing in his heart, had been heard 
through the thin wall of the house in the girl's 
sick-room, and had told her of the love of the 
Saviour. 

The records of Christian ministry are full of 
such good work done unintentionally. Failing 
to leave a blessing where it was hoped a bless- 
ing would be received, it blessed some other 
life. We may not say that any good work has 
failed until we know in the last great harvest all 
the results of the things we have done and the 
words we have spoken. 

*' Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed ; 

Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain ; 
For all our acts to many issues lead ; 

And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain, 

Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain, 
The Lord will fashion in his own good time 
(Be this the laborer's proudly humble creed), 
ftuch ends as in his wisdom, fitliest chime 

With his vast love's eternal harmonies. 

There is no failure for the good and wise ; 
What though thy seed should fall by the wayside, 

And the birds snatch it ? — Yet the birds are fed ; 
Or they may bear it far across the tide, 

To give rich harvests after thou art dead." 



DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 153 

Many people die, and see yet no harvest from 
their life's sowing. They come to the end of 
their years, and their hands are empty. But 
when they enter heaven they will find that they 
have really been building there all the while, 
that the things that have seemed to leave no 
result on the earth have left glorious results 
inside the gates of pearl. 

" There is no end to the sky, 

And the stars are everywhere, 
And time is eternity, 

And the here is over there ; 
For the common deeds of the common day 
Are ringing bells in the far away." 

Then even if the work we do does not itself 
leave any record, the doing of it leaves a record 
— an impression — on our own life. There is 
a word of Scripture which says, " He that 
doeth the will of God abideth forever." Doing 
God's will builds up enduring character in us. 
Every obedience adds a new touch of beauty to 
the soul. Every true thing we do in Christ's 
name, though it leave no mark anywhere else in 
God's universe, leaves an imperishable mark on 



154 DOING THINGS FOR CHRIST. 

our own life. Every deed of unselfish kindness 
that we perform with love for Christ in our 
heart, though it bless no other soul in all the 
world, leaves its sure benediction on ourselves. 

Thousands of years since a leaf fell on the 
soft clay and seemed to be lost. But last sum- 
mer a geologist in his ramblings broke off a 
piece of rock with his hammer, and there lay 
the image of the leaf, with every line, and 
every vein, and all the delicate tracery, pre- 
served in the stone through these centuries. 
So the words we speak, and the things we do for 
Christ to-day, may seem to be lost, but in the 
great final revealing the smallest of them will 
appear, to the glory of Christ and the reward of 
the doer. 



CHAPTER XV. 

HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 

"As we meet and touch each day 
The many travellers on our way, 
Let every such brief contact be 
A glorious, helpful ministry; 
The contact of the soil and seed, 
Each giving to the other's need, 
Each helping on the other's best, 
And blessing each as well as blest." 

Even kindness may be overdone. One may 
be too gentle. Love may hold others back 
from duty, and thus may wreck destinies. We 
need to guard against meddling with God's dis 
cipline, softening the experience that he means 
to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind 
that he intends to blow chillingly. All summer 
does not make a good zone to live in ; we need 
autumn and winter to temper the heat, and 
keep vegetation from luxuriant overgrowth. 
The best thing we can do for others is not 

155 



156 HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 

always to take their load or do their duty for 
them. 

Of course we are to be helpful to others. 
No aim should be put higher in our life-plans 
than that of personal helpfulness. The motto 
of the true Christian cannot be other than 
that of the Master: "Not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister." Even in the ambition 
to gather and retain wealth, the spirit of the 
desire must be, if we are Christians at all, that 
thereby we may become more helpful to others ; 
that through, or by means of, our wealth, we 
may be enabled to do larger and greater good. 
Whatever gift, power, or possession we have 
that we do not seek to use in this way is not 
yet truly devoted to God. Fruit is the test of 
character, and the purpose of fruit is not to 
adorn the tree or vine, but to feed hunger. 
Whatever we are, whatever we have, is fruit, 
and must be held for the feeding of the hunger 
of others. Thus personal helpfulness is the 
aim of all truly consecrated life. In so far as 
we are living for ourselves, we are not Chris- 
tians 



HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. l$f 

Then there are many ways of helping others. 
Some people help us in material ways. It is a 
still higher kind of help which we get from 
those who minister to our mental needs, 
who write the books which charm, instruct, 
and entertain us. Mind is greater than body. 
Bread, and clothing, and furniture, and houses 
will not satisfy our intellectual cravings. There 
are those, however, who do help us in these 
loftier ranges. Music, poetry, and art minister 
both to our gratification and our culture. Good 
books bring to us inestimable benefits. They 
tell us of new worlds, and inspire us to conquer 
them. They show us lofty and noble ideals, 
and stimulate us to attain them. They make 
us larger, better, stronger. The help we get 
from books is incalculable. 

Yet the truest and best help any one can 
give to others is not in material things, but in 
ways that make them stronger and better. 
Money is good alms when money is really 
needed, but in comparison with the divine gifts 
of hope, friendship, courage, sympathy, and 
love, it is paltry and poor. Usually the help 



158 HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 

people need is not so much the lightening oi 
their burden, as fresh strength to enable them 
to bear their burden, and stand up under it. 
The best thing we can do for another, some one 
has said, is not to make some things easy for 
him, but to make something of him. 

It is just here that friendship makes most of 
its mistakes. It over-helps. It helps by minis- 
tering relief, by lifting away loads, by gathering 
hindrances out of the way, when it would help 
much more wisely by seeking to impart hope, 
strength, energy. " Our friends," says Emer- 
son, " are those who make us do what we can." 
Says another writer : " Our real friend is not 
the man or woman who smooths over our diffi- 
culties, throws a cloak over our failings, stands 
between us and the penalties which our mis- 
takes have brought upon us, but the man or 
woman who makes us understand ourselves, 
and helps us to better things." Love is weak, 
and too often pampers and flatters. It thinks 
that loyalty requires it to make life easy as 
possible for the beloved one. 

Too often our friendship is most short 



HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 1 59 

sighted in this regard, and most hurtful to 
those we fervently desire to aid. We should 
never indulge or encourage weakness in others 
when we can in any way stimulate it into 
strength. We should never do anything for 
another which we can inspire him to do for 
himself. Much parental affection errs at this 
point. Life is made too easy for children. 
They are sheltered when it were better if they 
faced the storm. They are saved from toil and 
exertion, when toil and exertion are God's 
ordained means of grace for them, of which 
the parents rob them in their over-tenderness. 
There are children who are wronged by the 
cruelty and inhumanity of parents, and whose 
cries to heaven make the throne of the Eternal 
rock and sway ; but there are children, also, who 
are wronged of much that is noblest and best 
in their inheritance by the over-kindness of 
parents. 

In every warm friendship, too, there is strong 
temptation to make the same mistake. We 
have to be ever on our guard against over-help- 
ing. Our aim should always be to inspire in 



160 HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 

our friend new energy, to develop in him the 
noblest strength, to bring out his best man- 
hood. Over-helping defeats these offices of 
friendship. 

There is one particular point at which a 
special word of caution may well be spoken. 
We need to guard our sympathies when we 
would comfort and help those who are suffer- 
ing or are in trouble of any kind. It may seem 
a severe thing to say, but illness is ofttimes 
made worse by the pity of friends. There is 
in weak natures a tendency to indulge sickness, 
to exaggerate its symptoms, to imagine that it 
is more serious than it really is, and easily to 
succumb to its influence. You find your friend 
indisposed, and you are profuse in your ex- 
pressions of sympathy, encouraging or suggest- 
ing fears, urging prompt medical help. You 
think you have shown kindness, but very likely 
you have done sore injury. You have left a 
depressing influence behind you. Your friend 
is disheartened and alarmed. You have left 
him weaker, not stronger. 

It may seem hard-hearted to appear to be 



HELPING AND OVER-HELPING, l6l 

unsympathetic with invalids, and those who are 
slightly or even seriously sick ; not to take inter- 
est in their complaints ; not to say commiser- 
ating things to them ; but really it is the part 
of true friendship to help sick people fight the 
battle with their ills. We ought, therefore, to 
guard against speaking any word which will 
discourage them, increase their fear, exaggerate 
their thought of their illness, or weaken them 
in their struggle. On the other hand, we 
ought to say words which will cheer and 
strengthen them, and make them braver for 
the fight. Our duty is to help them to get 
well. 

Perhaps the very medicine they need is a 
glimpse of cheerful outlook. Sick people oft- 
times fall into a mood of disheartenment and 
self-pity which seriously retards their recovery. 
To sit down beside them then, and fall into 
their gloomy spirit, listening sympathetically 
to their discouraged words, is to do them sore 
unkindness. The true office of friendship in 
such cases is to drive away the discouragement, 
and put hope and courage into the sore heart 



1 62 HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 

We must try to make our sick friend braver to 
endure his sufferings. 

Then, even in the sacredness of sorrow, we 
should never forget that our mission to others 
is not merely to weep with them, but to help 
them to be victorious, to receive their sorrow as 
a messenger from God, and to bear themselves 
as God's children under it. Instead, therefore, 
of mere emotional condolence with our friends 
in their times of grief, we should seek to pre- 
sent to them the strong comforts of divine love, 
and to inspire them to the bearing of their 
sorrow in faith and hope and joy. 

So all personal helpfulness should be wise and 
thoughtful. It should never tend to pamper 
weakness, to encourage dependence, to make 
people timid, to debilitate manliness and woman- 
liness, to make parasites of those who turn to 
us with their burdens and needs. We must 
take care that our helping does not dwarf any 
life which we ought rather to stimulate to 
noble and beautiful growth. God never makes 
such mistakes as this. He never fails us in 



HELPING AND OVER-HELPING. 1 63 

need, but he loves us too well and is too wise to 
relieve us of weights which we need to make 
our growth healthful and vigorous. We should 
learn from God. and should help as he helps, 
without over-helping. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE ONLY ONE. 

" Before the monstrous wrong he sets him down — 

One man against a stone walled city of sin. 
***■***■ 

When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier 
Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars." 

— E. R. SiLL c 

There are a great many people in this world 
— hundreds of millions, tables of population 
foot up. Yet in a sense each one of us is the 
only one. Each individual life has relations of 
its own in which it must stand alone, and into 
which no other life can come. Companionships 
may be close, and they may give much comfort 
and inspiration, but in all the inner meaning of 
life each individual lives apart and alone. No 
one can live your life for you. No one but 
yourself can answer your questions, meet your 
responsibilities, make your decisions and choices. 
Your relations with God no one but yourself 
164 



THE ONLY ONE. 165 

can fulfil. No one can believe for you. A 
thousand friends may encircle you and pray for 
your soul, but until you lift up your own heart 
in prayer no communication is established be- 
tween you and God. No one can get your sins 
forgiven but yourself. No one can obey God for 
you. No other one can do your work for Christ, 
or render your account at the judgment-seat. 

In the realm of experience also the same is 
true. Each person suffers alone, as if there 
were no other being in the universe. Friends 
may stand by us in our hours of pain or sorrow, 
and may sympathize with us or administer com- 
fort or alleviation, but they enter not really into 
the experiences. In these we are alone. No 
one can meet your temptations for you, or fight 
your battles, or endure your trials. The tender- 
est friendship, the holiest love, cannot enter 
into the solitariness in which each one of us 
lives apart. 

" Still in each heart of hearts a hidden deep 
Lies, never fathomed by its dearest, best." 

This aloneness of life sometimes becomes 
very real in consciousness. All great souls ex* 



1 66 THE ONLY ONE. 

perience it as they rise out of and above the 
common mass of men in their thoughts and 
hopes and aspirations, as the mountains rise 
from the level of the vale and little hills. All 
great leaders of men ofttimes must stand 
alone, as they move in advance of the ranks of 
their followers. The battles of truth and of 
progress have usually been fought by lonely 
souls. Elijah, for example, in a season of dis- 
heartenment and despondency, gave it as part of 
the exceptional burden of his life that he was 
the only one in the field for God. It is so in all 
great epochs ; God calls one man to stand for 
him. As Robert Browning says : — 

"In life exceptional, 
When old things terminate and new commence, 
A solitary great man's worth the world. 
God takes the business in his own hand 
At such time." 

But the experience is not that only of great 
souls ; there come times in the lives of all who 
are living faithfully and worthily when they 
must stand alone for God, without companion- 
ship, perhaps without sympathy or encourage- 



THE ONLY ONE. 1 67 

ment. Here is a young person, the only one of 
his family who has confessed Christ. He takes 
him as his Saviour, and then stands up before 
the world and vows to be his and follow him. 
He goes back to his home. The members of 
the home circle are very dear to him ; but none 
of them are Christians, and he must stand alone 
for Christ among them. Perhaps they oppose 
him in his discipleship — in varying degrees this 
ofttimes is the experience. Perhaps they are 
only indifferent, making no opposition, only 
quietly watching his life to see if it is consist- 
ent. In any case, however, he must stand for 
Christ alone, without the help that comes from 
companionship. 

Or it may be in the workshop or in the school 
that the young Christian must stand alone. He 
returns from the Lord's Table to his week-day 
duties, full of noble impulses, but finds himself 
the only Christian in the place where his duty 
leads him. His companions are ready to sneer, 
and they point the finger of scorn at him, with 
irritating epithets. Or they even persecute him 
in petty ways. At least they are not Christ's 



1 68 THE ONLY ONE. 

friends, and he, as follower of the Master, finds 
no sympathy among them in his new life. He 
must stand alone in his discipleship, conscious 
all the while that unfriendly eyes are upon him. 
Many a young or older Christian finds it very 
hard to be the only one to stand for Christ in 
the circle in which his daily work fixes his 
place. 

This aloneness puts upon one a great respon- 
sibility. For example, you are the only Christian 
in your home. You are the only witness Christ 
has in your house, the only one through whom 
to reveal his love, his grace, his holiness. You 
are the only one to represent Christ in your 
family, to show there the beauty of Christ, 
the sweetness and gentleness of Christ, to do 
there the works of Christ, the things he would 
do if he lived in your home. Perhaps the sal- 
vation of all the souls of your family depends 
upon your being true and faithful in your own 
place. If you falter in your loyalty, if you fail 
in your duty, your loved ones may be lost and 
the blame will be yours ; their blood will be 
upon you. 



THE ONLY ONE. 1 69 

In like manner, if you are the only Christian 
In the shop, the store, or the office where you 
work, a peculiar responsibility rests upon you, 
a responsibility which no other one shares with 
you. You are Christ's only witness in your 
place. If you do not testify there for him, there 
is no other one who will do it. Miss Havergal 
tells of her experience in the girls' school at 
Diisseldorf. She went there soon after she had 
become a Christian and had confessed Christ. 
Her heart was very warm with love for her 
Saviour and she was eager to speak for him. To 
her amazement, however, she soon learned that 
among the hundred girls in the school, she was 
the only Christian. Her first thought was one of 
dismay — she could not confess Christ in that 
great company of worldly, un-Christian compan- 
ions. Her gentle, sensitive heart shrank from a 
duty so hard. Her second thought, however, 
was that she could not refrain from confessing 
Christ. She was the only one Christ had there 
and she must be faithful. "This was very 
bracing," she writes. " I felt I must try to walk 
worthy of my calling for Christ's sake. It 



170 THE ONLY ONE. 

brought a new and strong desire to bear wit- 
ness for my Master. It made me more watch- 
ful and earnest than ever before, for I knew that 
any slip in word or deed would bring discredit 
on my Master." She realized that she had a 
mission in that school, that she was Christ's 
witness there, his only witness, and that she 
dare not fail. 

This same sense of responsibility rests upon 
every thoughtful Christian who is called to be 
Christ's only witness in a place — in a home, 
in a community, in a store, or school, or shop, 
or social circle. He is Christ's only servant 
there, and he dare not be unfaithful, else the 
whole work of Christ in that place may fail. 
He is the one light set to shine there for his 
Master, and if his light be hidden, the darkness 
will be unrelieved. So there is special inspira- 
tion in this consciousness of being the only one 
Christ has in a certain place. 

There is a sense in which this is true also of 
every one of us all the time. We really are 
always the only one Christ has at the particular 
place at which we stand. There may be thou- 



THE ONLY ONE. 171 

sands of other lives about us. .We may be only 
one of a great company, of a large congregation, 
of a populous community. Yet each one of us 
has a life that is alone in its responsibility, in 
its danger, in its mission and duty. There may 
be a hundred others close beside me, but not 
one of them can take my place, or do my duty, 
or fulfil my mission, or bear my responsibility 
Though every one of the other hundred do his 
work, and do it perfectly, my work waits for me, 
and if I do not do it, it never will be done. 

We can understand how that if the great 
prophet had failed God that day when he was 
the only one God had to stand for him, the con- 
sequences would have been most disastrous ; 
the cause of God would have suffered irrepara- 
bly. But are we sure that the calamity to 
Christ's kingdom would be any less if one of us 
should fail God in our lowly place any common 
day? 

Stories are told of a child finding a little leak 
in the dike that shuts off the sea from Holland, 
and stopping it with his hand till help could 
come, staying there all the night, holding back 



1/2 THE ONLY ONE. 

the floods with his little hand. It was but a 
tiny, trickling stream that he held back ; yet if 
he had not done it, it would soon have become 
a torrent, and before morning the sea would 
have swept over the land, submerging fields, 
homes, and cities. Between the sea and all this 
devastation there was but a boy's hand. Had 
the child failed, the floods would have rolled in 
with their remorseless ruin. We understand 
how important it was that that boy should be 
faithful to his duty, since he was the only one 
God had that night to save Holland. 

But do you know that your life may not stand 
any day, and be all that stands, between some 
great flood of moral ruin and broad, fair fields of 
beauty ? Do you know that your failure in your 
lowly place and duty may not let in a sea of 
iisaster which shall sweep away human hopes 
and joys and human souls ? The humblest of 
us dare not fail, for our one life is all God has at 
the point where we stand. 

This truth of personal responsibility is one of 
tremendous moment. We do not escape it by 
being in a crowd, one of a family, one of a com- 



THE ONLY ONE. 1 73 

munity. No one but ourself can live our life, 
do our work, meet our obligation, bear our bur- 
den. No one but ourself can stand for us 
before God to render an account of our deeds. 
In the deepest, realest sense each one of us lives 
alone. 

There is another phase of this subject, how- 
ever, which should not be overlooked. While 
we must stand alone in our place and be faithful 
to our trust, our responsibility reaches only to 
our own duty. Others beside us have their part 
also to do, and the perfection of the whole work 
depends upon their faithfulness as well as upon 
ours. The best any of us can do in this world 
is but a fragment. The old prophet thought his 
work had failed because Baalism was not yet 
entirely destroyed. Then he was told of three 
other men, who would come after him — two 
kings and then another prophet, who each in 
turn would do his part, when at last the destruc- 
tion of the great alien idolatry would be com- 
plete. Elijah's faithfulness had not failed, but 
his achievement was only .a fragment of the 
whole work. 



174 THE ONLY ONE. 

This is very suggestive and very comforting. 
We are not responsible for finishing everything 
we begin. It may be our part only to begin it ; 
the carrying on and finishing of it may be the 
work of others whom we do not know, of others 
perhaps not yet born. We all enter into the work 
of those who have gone before us, and others who 
come after us shall in turn enter into our work. 
Our duty simply is to do well and faithfully 
our own little part. If we do this we need 
never fret ourselves about the part we cannot 
do. That is not our work at all, but belongs to 
some other worker, waiting now, perchance, in 
some obscure place, who at the right time will 
come forward with new heart and skilful hand, 
anointed by God for his task. 

Mr. Sill illustrates this truth in one of his 
poems, where, speaking of the young, "led on 
by courage and immortal hope, and with the 
morning in their hearts," he says : — 

"They to the disappointed earth shall give 
The lives we meant to live, 
Beautiful, free, «and strong ; 
The light we almost had 



THE ONLY ONE. 1 75 

Shall make them glad; 

The words we waited long 

Shall run in music from their voice and song.* 

Mr. Whittier also suggests the same truth:—* 

" Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 

"What matter I or they, 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made?" 

So while we are alone in our responsibility we 
need give no thought for anything but our own 
duty, our own little fragment of the Lord's 
work. The things we cannot do some other 
one is waiting and preparing now to do after 
the work has passed from our hand. There is 
comfort in this for any who fail in their efforts, 
and must leave tasks unfinished which they 
hoped to complete. The finishing is another's 
missioa 



CHAPTER XVIL 

SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 

" Life is a leaf of paper white, 
Whereon each one of us may write 
His word or two — and then comes night." 

— Lowell, 

Many good people are very slow. They do 
their work well enough, perhaps, but so leis- 
urely that they accomplish in their brief time 
only a fraction of what they might accomplish. 
They lose, in aimless loitering, whole golden 
hours which they ought to fill with quick activi- 
ties. They seem to have no true appreciation 
of the value of time, or of their own accounta- 
bility for its precious moments. They live con- 
scientiously, it may be, but they have no strong 
constraining sense of duty impelling them to 
ever larger and fuller achievement. They have 
a work to do, but there is no hurry for it ; there 
is plenty of time in which to do it. 
176 



SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 1 77 

It is quite safe to say that the majority of 
people do not get into their life half the achieve- 
ment that was possible to them when they be- 
gan to live, simply because they have never 
learned to work swiftly, and under pressure of 
great motives. 

There can be no doubt that we are required 
to make the most possible of our life. Mr. 
Longfellow once gave to his pupils, as a motto, 
this : " Live up to the best that is in you.'' To 
do this, we must not only develop our talents 
to the utmost power and capacity of which they 
are susceptible, but we must also use these 
talents to the accomplishment of the largest 
and best results they are capable of producing. 
In order to reach this standard, we must never 
lose a day* nor even an hour, and we must put 
into every day and every hour all that is pos- 
sible of activity and usefulness. 

Dreaming through days and years, however 
brilliantly one may dream, can never satisfy 
the demands of the responsibility which inheres 
essentially in every soul that is born into the 
world. Life means duty, toil, work. There is 



178 SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 

something divinely allotted to each hour, and 

the hour one loiters remains forever an unfilled 

blank. We can ideally fulfil our mission only 

by living up always to the best that is in us, 

and by doing every day the very most that we 

can do. 

" So here hath been dawning another blue day; 
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away? 
Out of eternity this new day is born ; 
Into eternity at night will return." 

We turn over to our Lord for example, since 
his was the one life in all the ages that reached 
the divine thought, and filled out the divine 
pattern ; and wherever we see him, we find him 
intent on doing the will of his Father, not 
losing a moment, nor loitering at any task. 
We see him ever hastening from place to place, 
from ministry to ministry, from baptism to 
temptation, from teaching to healing, from 
miracle-working to solitary prayer. His feet 
never loitered. He lost no moments ; he 
seems indeed to have crowded the common 
work of years into a few short, intense hours. 
He is painted for us as a man continually under 



SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 179 

the strongest pressure, with a work to do which 
he was eager to accomplish in the shortest 
possible time. He was always calm, never in 
nervous haste, yet ever quietly moving with 
resistless energy on his holy errand. 

We ought to catch our Master's spirit in this 
celerity in the Father's business. Time is 
short and duty is large. There is not a moment 
to lose, if, in our allotted period, we would finish 
the work that is given us to do. We need to 
get our Lord's " straightway " into our life, so 
that we shall hasten from duty to duty, with- 
out pause or idle lingering. We need to get 
into our heart a consciousness of being ever on 
the Master's errands, that shall be within us a 
mighty compulsion, driving us always to duty. 

Naturally we are indolent, and fond of ease 
and self indulgence. We need to be carried 
out of and beyond ourselves. There is no 
motive strong enough to do this but love to 
God and to our fellow-men. Supreme love to 
God makes us desire to do with alacrity every- 
thing he commands. Love to our fellow-men 
draws us to all service of sympathy and benefi- 



l8o SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 

cence for them, regardless of cost. Constrained 
by such motives, we shall never become laggards 
in duty. 

Swiftness or slowness in duty is very much 
a matter of habit. As one is trained in early 
life, one is quite sure to continue in mature 
years. A loitering child will become a loiter- 
ing man or woman. The habit grows, as all 
habits do. 

" Lose this day loitering, 'twill be the same story 
To-morrow, and the next more dilatory; 
The indecision brings its own delays, 
And days are lost, lamenting o'er lost days. 

" Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. 
What you can do, and think you can, begin it. 
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it. 
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; 
Begin it, and the work will be completed." 

Many people lose in the aggregate whole 
years of time out of their lives for want of 
system. They make no plan for their days. 
They let duties mingle in inextricable con- 
fusion. They are always in feverish haste. 
They talk continually of being overwhelmed 



SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. l8l 

with work, of the great pressure that is upon 
them, of being driven beyond measure. They 
always have the air of men who have scarcely 
time to eat or sleep. And there is nothing 
feigned in all their intense occupation. They 
really are hurried men. Yet in the end they 
accomplish but little in comparison with their 
great activity, because they work without order, 
and always feverishly and nervously. Swift- 
ness in accomplishment is always calm and 
quiet. It plans well, suffering no confusion in 
tasks. Hurried haste is always flurried haste, 
which does nothing well. " Unhasting yet un- 
resting " is the motto of quick and abundant 
achievement. 

' ' * Without haste ! without rest ! ' 

Bind the motto to thy breast; 
Bear it with thee as a spell; 

Storm or sunshine, guard it well; 
Heed not flowers that round thee bloom, 

Bear it onward to the tomb. 

" Haste not ! let no thoughtless deed 
Mar for aye the spirit's speed; 
Ponder well and know the right; 



1 82 SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 

Onward then with all thy might; 
Haste not; years can ne'er atone 
For one reckless action done. 

"Rest not! life is sweeping by, 
Do and dare before you die; 
Something mighty and sublime 

Leave behind to conquer time; 
Glorious 'tis to live for aye 
When these forms have passed away 6 

" Haste not! rest not! calmly wait; 

Meekly bear the storm of fate ; 
Duty be thy polar guide ; 

Do the norht' whate'er betide. 
Haste not ! rest not ! Conflicts past, 

God shall crown thy work at last." 

There is another phase of the lesson. Not 
swiftness only, but patient persistence through 
days and years, is the mark of true living. 
There are many people who can work under 
pressure for a little time, but who tire of the 
monotony and slack in their duty by and by, 
failing at last because they cannot endure unto 
the end. There are people who begin many 
noble things, but soon weary of them and drop 
them out of their hands. They may pass for 



SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 1 83 

brilliant men, men even of genius, but in the 
end they have for biography only a volume of 
fragments of chapters, not one of them finished, 
Such men may attract a great deal of passing 
attention, while the tireless plodders working 
beside them receive no praise, no commenda- 
tion ; but in the real records of life, written in 
abiding lines in God's Book, it is the latter who 
will shine in the brightest splendor. Robert 
Browning puts this truth in striking way in 

one of his poems : — 

"Now, observe, 

Sustaining is no brilliant self-display 

Like knocking down or even setting up: 

Much bustle these necessitate ; and still 

To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth 

Is Hercules, who substitutes his own 

For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe 

A whole day, — not the passive and obscure 

Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, 

And is to go on bearing that same load 

When Hercules turns ash on Oeta's top. 

1 Tis the transition-stage, the tug and strain, 

That strike men : standing still is stupid-like." 

So we get our lesson. There is so much to 
do in the short days that we dare not lose a 



1 84 SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 

moment. Life is so laden with responsibility 
that to trifle at any point is sin. Even on the 
seizing of minutes eternal issues may depend. 
Of course we must take needed rest to keep 
our lives in condition for duty. But what shall 
we say of those strong men and women who 
do almost nothing but rest ? What shall we 
say of those who live only to have amusement, 
who dance away their nights and then sleep 
away their days, and thus hurry on toward the 
judgment-bar, doing nothing for God or for 
man ? Life is duty ; every moment of it has 
its own duty. There is no malfeasance so sad 
and so terrible in its penalties as that which 
wastes the golden years in idleness or pleasure, 
and leaves duty undone. 

Shall we not seek to crowd the days with 
most earnest living ? Shall we not learn to 
redeem the time from indolence, from loitering, 
from unmethodicalness, from the waste of pre- 
cious moments, from self-indulgence, from impa- 
tience of persistent toil, from all that lessens 
achievement ? Shall we not learn to work 
swiftly for our Master ? 



SWIFTNESS IN DUTY. 1 85 

" You must live each day at your very best: 
The work of the world is done by few ; 
God asks that a part be done by you. 

s * Say oft of the years as they pass from sight, 
* This is life with its golden store : 
I shall have it once, but it comes no more.' 

J6 Have a purpose, and do with your utmost might 
You will finish your work on the other side, 
When you wake in his likeness, satisfied." 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 

*The smallest bark on life's tumultuous oceaa 

Will leave a track behind for evermore ; 
The slightest wave of influence set in motion 
Extends and widens to the eternal shore. 1 * 

Every one of us casts a shadow. There 
hangs about us a sort of penumbra, — a strange, 
indefinable something, — which we call personal 
influence, which has its effect on every other 
life on which it falls. It goes with us wherever 
we go. It is not something we can have when 
we want to have it, and then lay aside when we 
will, as we lay aside a garment. It is some- 
thing that always pours out from our life, like 
light from a lamp, like heat from flame, like 
perfume from a flower. 

No one can live, and not have influence 
Says Elihu Burritt : " No human being can 
come into this world without increasing or 
186 



THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 1 87 

diminishing the sum total of human happiness, 
not only of the present, but of every subsequent 
age of humanity. No one can detach himself 
from this connection. There is no sequestered 
spot in the universe, no dark niche along the 
disk of non-existence, to which he can retreat 
from his relations to others, where he can with- 
draw the influence of his existence upon the 
moral destiny of the world ; everywhere his 
presence or absence will be felt, everywhere he 
will have companions who will be better or 
worse for his influence." These are true words. 
To be at all is to have influence, either for good 
or evil, over other lives. 

The ministry of personal influence is some- 
thing very wonderful. Without being conscious 
of it, we are always impressing others by this 
strange power that goes out from us. Others 
watch us and their actions are modified by ours. 
Many a life has been started on a career of 
beauty and blessing by the influence of one 
noble act. The disciples saw their Master 
praying, and were so impressed by his earnest- 
ness, or by the radiancy they saw on his face, 



1 88 THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 

as he communed with his Father, that when he 
joined them again they asked him to teach 
them how to pray. Every true soul is im- 
pressed continually by the glimpses it has of 
loveliness, of holiness, or of nobleness in 
others. 

One kind deed often inspires many kind- 
nesses. Here is a story from a newspaper of 
the other day, which illustrates this. A little 
newsboy entered a car on the elevated railway 
train, and slipping into a cross-seat, was soon 
asleep. Presently two young ladies came in, 
and took seats opposite to him. The child's 
feet were bare, his clothes were ragged, and his 
face was pinched and drawn, showing marks of 
hunger and suffering. The young ladies no- 
ticed him, and, seeing that his cheek rested 
against the hard window-sill, one of them arose, 
and quietly raising his head, slipped her muff 
under it for a pillow. 

The kind act was observed, and now mark its 
influence. An old gentleman in the next seat, 
without a word, held out a silver quarter to the 
young lady, nodding toward the boy. After a 



THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 1 89 

moment's hesitation, she took it, and as she did 
so, another man handed her a dime, a woman 
across the aisle held out some pennies, and 
almost before the young woman realized what 
she was doing, she was taking a collection for 
the poor boy. Thus from the one little act there 
had gone out a wave of influence touching the 
hearts of two score people, and leading each of 
them to do something. 

Common life is full of just such illustrations 
of the influence of kindly deeds. Every good 
life leaves in the world a twofold ministry, that 
of the things it does directly to bless others, 
and that of the silent influence it exerts, through 
which others are made better, or are inspired to 
do like good things. 

Influence is something, too, which even death 
does not end. When earthly life closes, a good 
man's active work ceases. He is missed in the 
places where his familiar presence has brought 
benedictions. No more are his words heard by 
those who ofttimes have been cheered or com- 
forted by them. No more do his benefactions 
find their way to homes of need where so many 



190 THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 

times they have brought relief. No more does 
his gentle friendship minister strength and hope 
and courage to hearts that have learned to love 
him. The death of a good man, in the midst 
of his usefulness, cuts off a blessed ministry 
of helpfulness in the circle in which he has 
dwelt. But his influence continues. Long- 
fellow writes : — 

"Alike are life and death 

When life in death survives, 
And the uninterrupted breath 
Inspires a thousand lives. 

" Were a star quenched on high, 
For ages would its light, 
Still travelling downward from the sky, 
Shine on our mortal sight. 

•* So when a great man dies, 
For years beyond our ken 
The light he leaves behind him lies 
Upon the paths of men." 

The influence which our dead have over us is 
ofttimes very great. We think we have lost 
them when we see their faces no more, nor hear 



THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 191 

their voices, nor receive the accustomed kind- 
nesses at their hands. But in many cases there 
is no doubt that what our loved ones do for us 
after they are gone is quite as important as 
what they could have done for us had they 
stayed with us. The memory of beautiful lives 
is a benediction, softened and made more rich 
and impressive by the sorrow which their 
departure caused. The influence of such sacred 
memories is in a certain sense more tender than 
that of life itself. Death transfigures our loved 
one, as it were, sweeping away the faults and 
blemishes of the mortal life, and leaving us an 
abiding vision, in which all that was beautiful, 
pure, gentle, and true in him remains to us. 
We often lose friends in the competitions and 
strifes of earthly life, whom we would have kept 
forever had death taken them away in the 
earlier days when love was strong. Often is it 
true, as Cardinal Newman writes : — 

" He lives to us who dies ; he is but lost who lives. " 

Thus even death doth not quench the influ- 
ence of a good life. It continues to bless oth- 



I92 THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 

ers long after the life has passed from earth. It 
is true, as Mrs. Sangster writes : — 

5< They never quite leave us, our friends who have passed 
Through the shadows of death to the sunlight above ; 
A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast 
To the places they blessed with their presence and 
love. 

*' The work which they left and the books which they 
read 
Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence rare ; 
And the songs that they sung, and the dear words that 
they said 
Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air. 

" And oft when alone, and oft in the throng, 

Or when evil allures us, or sin draweth nigh, 
A whisper comes gently, * Nay, do not the wrong,' 
And we feel that our weakness is pitied on high." 

It must be remembered that not all influence 
is good. Evil deeds also have influence. Bad 
men live, too, after they are gone. Cried a 
dying man whose life had been full of harm to 
others : " Gather up my influence, and bury it 
with me in my grave.' ' But the frantic, re- 
morseful wish was in vain. The man went out 



THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 1 93 

of the world, but his influence stayed behind 
him, its poison to work for ages in the lives of 
others. 

We need, therefore, to guard our influence 
with most conscientious care. It is a crime to 
fling into the street an infected garment which 
may carry contagion to men's homes. It is a 
worse crime to send out a printed page bearing 
words infected with the virus of moral death. 
The men who prepare and publish the vile liter- 
ature which to-day goes everywhere, polluting 
and defiling innocent lives, will have a fearful 
account to render when they stand at God's bar 
to meet their influence. If we would make our 
lives worthy of God, and a blessing to the world, 
we must see to it that nothing we do shall influ- 
ence others in the slightest degree to evil. 

In the early days of American art there went 
from this country to London a young artist of 
genius and of a pure heart. He was poor, but had 
an aspiration for noble living as well as for fine 
painting. Among his pictures was one that in 
itself was pure, but that by a sensuous mind 
might be interpreted in an evil way. A lover 



194 THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 

of art saw this picture and purchased it. But 
when it was gone the young artist began to 
think of its possible hurtful influence on the 
weak, and his conscience troubled him. He 
went to his patron and said, " I have come to 
buy back my picture." The purchaser could 
not understand him. " Didn't I pay you enough 
for it ? Do you need money ? " he asked. " I 
am poor," replied the artist, " but my art is my 
life. Its mission must be good. The influence 
of that picture may possibly be harmful. I can- 
not be happy with it before the eyes of the 
world. It must be withdrawn." 

We should keep watch not only over our 
words and deeds in their intent and purpose, 
but also in their possible influence over others. 
There may be liberties which in us lead to no 
danger, but which to others, with less stable 
character and less helpful environment, would 
be full of peril. It is part of our duty to think 
of these weaker ones and of the influence of 
our example upon them. We may not do any- 
thing, in our strength and security, which might 
possibly harm others. We must be willing to 



THE SHADOWS WE CAST. 1 95 

sacrifice our liberty, if by its exercise we en- 
danger another's soul. This is the teaching of 
St. Paul in the words : " It is good not to eat 
flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything 
whereby thy brother stumbleth" ; and "If meat 
maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh 
for evermore, that I make not my brother to 
stumble." 

How can we make sure of an influence that 
shall be only a benediction ? There is no way 
but by making our life pure and good. Just in 
the measure in which we are filled with the 
Spirit of God and have the love of Christ in us, 
shall our influence be holy and a blessing to the 
world. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

" 'To-day ' unsullied comes to thee — newborn, 
To-morrow is not thine; 
The sun may cease to shine 
For thee, ere earth shall greet its morn. 

" Be earnest, then, in thought and deed, 
Nor fear approaching night ; 
Calm comes with evening light, 
And hope and peace. Thy duty heed ' to-day.' " 

— RUSKIN. 

If people's first thoughts were but as good 
and wise as their after-thoughts, life would be 
better and more beautiful than it is. We can 
all see our errors more clearly after we have 
committed them than we saw them before. 
We frequently hear persons utter the wish that 
they could go again over a certain period of 
their life, saying that they would live it differ- 
ently, that they would not repeat the mistakes 
196 



THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 197 

or follies which had so marred and stained the 
record they had made. 

Of course the wish that one might have a 
second chance with any past period of time is 
altogether vain. No doubt there ofttimes is 
much reason for shame and pain in our retro- 
spects. We live poorly enough at the best, 
even the saintliest of us, and many of us cer- 
tainly make sad work of our life. Human life 
must appear very pathetic, and ofttimes trag- 
ical, as the angels look down upon it. There 
are almost infinitely fewer wrecks on the great 
sea where the ships go, than on that other sea 
of which poets write, where lives with their 
freightage of immortal hopes and possibilities 
sail on to their destiny. We talk sometimes 
with wonder of what the ocean contains, of the 
treasures that lie buried far down beneath the 
waves. But who shall tell of the treasures that 
are hidden in the deeper, darker sea of human 
life, where they have gone down in the sad 
hours of defeat and failure ? 

" In dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships, 

While gold doubloons, that from the drowned hand fell, 



I98 THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

Lie nestled in the ocean-flowers' bell 

With love's gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips ; 

And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips, 
And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell 
Where sea- weed forests fill each ocean dell, 

And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips. 

" So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes, 
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself. 
In lonelier depths than where the river gropes, 
They lie deep, deep ; but I at times behold, 
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf, 
The gleam of irrecoverable gold." 

Glimpses of these lost things — these squan- 
dered treasures, these wasted possibilities, these 
pearls and gems of life that have gone down 
into the sea of our past — we may have when 
the reefs are left bare by the refluent tides, 
but glimpses only can we see. We cannot re- 
cover our treasures. The gleams only mock us. 
The past will not give again its gold and pearls 
to any frantic appealing of ours. 

There is something truly startling in this 
irreparableness of the past, this irrevocableness 
of the losses which we have suffered through 



THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 1 99 

our follies or our sins. About two centuries 
ago a great sun-dial was erected in All Souls' 
College, Oxford, England, the largest and no- 
blest dial, it is said, in the whole kingdom. 
Over the long pointer were written, in large 
letters of gold, the Latin words, referring to 
the hours, " Pereunt et imputantur'' Literally, 
the meaning is, " They perish, and are set down 
to our account " ; or, as they have been ren- 
dered in terser phrase, " They are wasted, and 
are added to our debt." 

It is said that these words on the dial have 
exerted a wonderful influence on the boyhood of 
many of the distinguished men who have re- 
ceived their training at Oxford, stimulating 
them to the most conscientious use of the 
golden hours as they passed and bearing fruit 
in long lives of earnestness and faithfulness. 
The lesson .is one that every young person 
should learn. In youth the hours are full of 
privileges. They come like angels, holding 
in their hands rich treasures, sent to us from 
God, which they offer to us ; and if we are 
laggard or indolent, or if we are too intent on 



200 THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

our own little trifles to give welcome to these 
heavenly messengers with their heavenly gifts, 
they quickly pass on and are gone. And they 
never come back again to renew the offer. 

On the dial of a clock in the palace of Napo- 
leon at Malmaison, the maker has put the 
words, " Non nescit revet ti"; "It does not know 
how to go backward." It is so of the great 
clock of Time — it never can be turned back- 
ward. The moments come to us but once; 
whatever we do with them we must do as they 
pass, for they will never come to us again. 

Then privilege makes responsibility. We 
shall have to give account to God for all that he 
sends to us by the mystic hands of the passing 
hours, and which we refuse or neglect to receive. 
"They are wasted and are added to our debt." 

The real problem of living, therefore, is how 
to take what the hours bring. He who does 
this, will live nobly and faithfully, and will 
fulfil God's plan for his life. The difference 
in men is not in the opportunities that come 
to them, but in their use of their opportunities. 
Many people who fail to make much of their 



THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 201 

lift charge their failure to the lack of opportuni- 
ties. They look at one who is continually doing 
good and beautiful things, or great and noble 
things, and think that he is specially favored, 
that the chances which come to him for such 
things are exceptional. Really, however, it is 
in his capacity for seeing and accepting what 
the hours bring of duty or privilege, that his 
success lies. Where other men see nothing, he 
sees a battle to fight, a duty to perform, a 
service to render, or an honor to win. Many 
a man waits long for opportunities, wondering 
why they never come to him, when really they 
have been passing by him day after day, unrec- 
ognized and unaccepted. 

There is a legend of an artist, who long 
sought for a piece of sandal-wood out of which 
to carve a Madonna. At last he was about to 
give up in despair, leaving the vision of his 
life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden 
to shape the figure from a block of oak-wood, 
which was destined for the fire. Obeying the 
command, he produced from the log of com- 
mon firewood a masterpiece. 



202 THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

In like manner many people wait for great 
and brilliant opportunities for doing the good 
things, the beautiful things, of which they 
dream, while through all the plain, common 
days, the very opportunities they require for 
such deeds lie close to them, in the simplest 
and most familiar passing events, and in the 
homeliest circumstances. They wait to find 
sandal-wood out of which to carve Madonnas, 
while far more lovely Madonnas than they 
dream of, are hidden in the common logs of 
oak they burn in their open fire-place, or 
spurn with their feet in the wood-yard. 

Opportunities come to all. The days of 
every life are full of them. But the trouble 
with too many of us is that we do not make 
anything out of them while we have them. 
Then next moment they are gone. One man 
goes through life sighing for opportunities. If 
only he had this or that gift, or place, or posi- 
tion, he would do great things, he says ; but 
with his means, his poor chances, his meagre 
privileges, his uncongenial circumstances, his 
limitations, he can do nothing worthy of him- 



THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 203 

self. Then another man comes up close beside 
him, with like means, chances, circumstances, 
privileges, and he achieves noble results, does 
heroic things, wins for himself honor and 
renown. The secret is in the man, not in his 
environment. Mr. Sill puts this well in his 
lines : — 

"This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: 
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; 
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged 
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords 
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's bannei 
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. 
A craven hung along the battle's edge, 
And thought, * Had I a sword of keener steel — 
That blue blade that the king's son bears — but this 
Blunt thing.' — He snapt and flung it from his hand, 
And lowering crept away and left the field. 
Then came the king's son wounded, sore bestead, 
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, 
Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand, 
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout 
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down, 
And saved a great cause that heroic day." 

With the blunt sword, broken now, which 
the craven had flung away as unfit for use, the 



204 THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

princely hand won its great victory. Life is 
full of illustrations of this very experience. 
The materials of life which one man has 
despised and spurned as unworthy of him, as 
having in them no charmed secret of success, 
another man is forever picking up out of the 
dust, and with them achieving noble and bril- 
liant successes. Men, alert and eager, are 
wanted, men with heroic heart and princely 
hand, to see and use the opportunities that 
lie everywhere in the most commonplace life. 
There is but one thing to do to get out of 
life all its possibilities of attainment and 
achievement ; we must train ourselves to take 
what every moment brings to us of privilege and 
of duty. Some people worry themselves over 
the vague wonder as to what the divine plan in 
life is for them. They have a feeling that God 
had some definite purpose in creating them, and 
that there is something he wants them to do in 
this world, and they would like to know how 
they can learn this divine thought for their life. 
The answer is really very simple. God is ready 
to reveal to us, with unerring definiteness, his 



THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 205 

plan for our life. This revealing he makes as 
we go on, showing us each moment one little 
fragment of his purpose. Says Faber : " The 
surest method of aiming at a knowledge of 
God's eternal purposes about us is to be found 
in the right use of the present moment. Each 
hour comes with some little fagot of God's will 
fastened upon its back." 

We have nothing to do, therefore, with any- 
thing save the privilege and duty of the one 
hour now passing. This makes the problem of 
living very simple. We need not look at our 
life as a whole, nor even carry the burden of a 
single year; if we but grasp well the meaning 
of the one little fragment of time immediately 
present, and do instantly all the duty and take 
all the privilege that the one hour brings, we 
shall thus do that which shall best please God 
and build up our own life into completeness. It 
ought never to be hard for us to do this. 

M God broke our years to hours and days, that hour by houf 
And day by day 
Just going on a little way, 
We might be able all along 



206 THE MEANING OF OPPORTUNITIES. 

To keep quite strong. 

Should all the weight of life 
Be laid across our shoulder, and the future, rife 
With woe and struggle, meet us face to face 

At just one place, 

We could not go, 

Our feet would stop; and so 
Sod lays a little on us every day, 
•Vnd never, I believe, on all the way 

Will burdens bear so deep, 
>r pathways lie so threatening and so steep, 

But we can go, if by God's power 

We only bear the burden of the hour." 

Living thus we shall make each hour radiant 
with the radiancy of duty well done, and radiant 
hours will make radiant years. But the missing 
of privileges and the neglecting of duties will 
leave days and years marred and blemished and 
make the life av *ast like a moth-eaten garment. 
We must catch v he sacred meaning of our 
opportunities if tv. yould live up to our best. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE SIN OP INGRATITUDE. 

5(1 The sun may shine upon the clod till it is warm, 
Warm for its own poor darkling self to live. 
He smites the diamond, and oh, how glows the gem, 
Chilling itself, irradiant, to give. 

" The silent soul, that takes but gives not out again, 
In shining thankfulness, a smile, a tear, 
Absorbing, makes none other glad, and misses so 
The purest and the best of love's rich cheer." 

— Mary K. A. Stone. 

Blessing given ought always to have some 
return. It is better to be a diamond, lighted to 
shine, than a clod, warmed to be only a dull, 
daik clod. We all receive numberless favors, 
but we do not all alike make fitting return. 

Krummacher has a pleasant little fable with a 
suggestion. When Zaccheus was old he still 
dwelt in Jericho, humble and pious before God 
and man. Every morning at sunrise he went 
out into the fields for a walk, and he always 
came back with a calm and happy mind to begin 

207 



208 THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE, 

his day's work. His wife wondered where he 
went in his walks, but he never spoke to her of 
the matter. One morning she secretly followed 
him. He went straight to the tree from which 
he first saw the Lord. Hiding herself, she 
watched him to see what he would do. He 
took a pitcher, and carrying water, he poured it 
about the tree's roots which were getting dry 
in the sultry climate. He pulled up some 
weeds here and there. He passed his hand 
fondly over the old trunk. Then he looked up 
at the place among the branches where he had 
sat that day when he first saw Jesus. After 
this he turned away, and with a smile of grati- 
tude went back to his home. His wife after- 
ward referred to the matter and asked him why 
he took such care of the old tree. His quiet 
answer was, " It was that tree which brought 
me to him whom my soul loveth. ,, 

There is no true life without its sacred me- 
morial of special blessing or good. There is 
something that tells of favor, of deliverance, of 
help, of influence, of teaching, of great kind- 
ness. There is some spot, some quiet walk, 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 209 

some room, some book, some face, that always 
recalls sweet memories. There is something 
that is precious to us because in some way it 
marks a holy place in life's journey. Most of 
us understand that loving interest of Zaccheus 
in his old tree, and can believe the little fancy 
to be even true. In what life is there no place 
that is always kept green in memory, because 
there a sweet blessing was received ? 

Yet there seem to be many who forget their 
benefits. There is much ingratitude in the 
world. It may not be so universal as some 
would have us believe. There surely are many 
who carry in their hearts, undimmed for long 
years, the memory of benefits and kindnesses 
received from friends, and who never cease to 
be grateful and to show their gratitude. Words- 
worth wrote : — 

" I've heard of hearts unkind, 

Kind deeds with coldness still returning; 
Alas ! the gratitude of men 

Hath left me oftener mourning.'" 

However, Archdeacon Farrar, referring to these 
words, says, " If Wordsworth found gratitude 



2IO THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 

a common virtue, his experience must have been 
except ional." There certainly are hearts unkind 
that do return coldness for kind deeds. There 
are children who forget the love and sacrifices 
of their parents and repay their countless kind 
nesses, not with grateful affection, honor, obe- 
dience, thoughtfulness, and service, but with 
disregard, indifference, disobedience, dishonor, 
sometimes even with shameful neglect and un- 
kindness. There are those who receive help 
from friends in unnumbered ways, through 
years, help that brings to them great aid in 
life — promotion, advancement, improvement in 
character, widening of privileges and opportu- 
nities, tender kindness that warms, blesses, and 
inspires the heart, and enriches, refines, and 
ennobles the life — who yet seem never to rec- 
ognize or appreciate the benefit and the good 
they receive. They appear to feel no obligation, 
no thankfulness. They make no return of love 
for all of love's ministry. They even repay it 
with complaint, with criticism, with bitterness. 
We have all known years of continued favors 
forgotten, and their memory wiped out by one 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 211 

small failure to grant a new request for help. 
We have all known malignant hate to be the 
return for 1-ong periods of lavish kindness. 

Ingratitude is robbery. It robs those to whom 
gratitude is due, for it is the withholding of that 
which is justly theirs. If you are kind to an- 
other, is he not your debtor? If you show 
another favors, does not he owe you thanks ? 
True, you ask no return, for love does not work 
for wages. Only selfishness demands repayment 
for help given, and is embittered by ingratitude. 
The Christly spirit continues to give and bless, 
pouring out its love in unstinted measure, 
though no act or word or look tells of gratitude. 

" If thy true service mounted, in its aim, 

No higher than the praise that men bestow 
On noble sacrifice, there might be shame 
That thou hast missed it so. 

" But not for selfish gain or low reward, 

Didst thou so labor under shade and sun; 
But with the conscious sense that for thy Lord 
This weary work was done. 

"He asked no thanks, no recognition nigh, 
No tender acceptation of his grace, 



212 THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 

No pitying tear from one responsive eye, 
No answering human face. 

" To do God's will — that was enough for Christ, 
'Mid griefs that make all agonies look dim. 
It shall for thee suffice — it hath sufficed, 
As it sufficed for him." 

Yet while love does not work for wages, not 
demand an equivalent for its services, it is 
sorely wronged when ungrateful lips are dumb. 
The quality of ingratitude is not changed be- 
cause faithful love is not frozen in the heart by 
its coldness. We owe at least loving remem- 
brance to one who has shown us kindness, 
though no other return may be possible, or 
though large return may already have been 
made. We can never be absolved from the duty 
of being grateful. " Owe no man anything but 
love " is a heavenly word. We always owe love ; 
that is a debt we never can pay off. 

Ingratitude is robbery. But it is cruelty as 
well as robbery. It always hurts the heart that 
must endure it. Few faults or injuries cause 
more pain and grief in tender spirits than in- 
gratitude. The pain may be borne in silence. 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 213 

Men do not speak of it to others, still less to 
those whose neglect or coldness inflicts it ; yet 
it is like thorns in the pillow. 

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind; 
Thou art not so unkind 
As man's ingratitude." 

Parents suffer unspeakably when the children 
for whom they have lived, suffered, and sacri- 
ficed, prove ungrateful. The ungrateful child 
does not know what bitter sorrow he causes the 
mother who bore him and nursed him, and the 
father who loves him more than his own life ; 
how their hearts bleed ; how they weep in secret 
over his unkindness. We do not know how we 
hurt our friends when we treat them ungrate- 
fully, forgetting all they have done for us, and 
repaying their favors with coldness. 

There is yet more of this lesson. Gratitude, 
to fulfil its gentle ministry, must find some 
fitting expression. It is not enough that it be 
cherished in the heart. There are many good 
people who fail at this point. They are really 
thankful for the good others do to them. They 
feci kindly enough in their hearts toward their 



214 THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 

benefactors. Perhaps they speak to othef 
friends of the kindnesses they have received. 
They may even put it into their prayers, telling 
God how they have been helped by others of 
his children, and asking him to reward and 
bless those who have been good to them. But 
meanwhile they do not in any way express their 
grateful feelings to the persons who have done 
them the favors or rendered them the offices of 
friendship. 

How does your friend know that you are 
grateful, if you do not in some way tell him 
that you are? Verily here is a sore fault of 
love, this keeping sealed up in the heart the 
generous feeling, the tender gratitude, which 
we ought to speak, and which would give so 
much comfort if it were spoken in the ear that 
ought to hear it. No pure, true, loving human 
heart ever gets beyond being strengthened and 
warmed to nobler service by words of honest 
and sincere appreciation. Flattery is con- 
temptible ; only vain spirits are elated by it. 
Insincerity is a sickening mockery ; the sensi- 
tive soul turns away from it in revulsion. But 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 21 5 

words of true gratitude are always to human 
hearts like cups of water to thirsty lips. We 
need not fear turning people's heads by genuine 
expressions of thankfulness ; on the other hand, 
nothing inspires such humility, such reverent 
praise to God, as the knowledge which such 
gratitude brings, — that one has been used of 
God to help, or bless, or comfort another 
life. 

Silence is said to be golden, and ofttimes, 
indeed, it is better than speech. " It is a fine 
thing in friendship/* says George MacDonald, 
"to know when to be silent." There are times 
when silence is the truest, fittest, divinest, 
most blessed thing, when words would only mar 
the hallowed sweetness of love's ministry. But 
there are times again when silence is disloyalty, 
cruelty, unkind as winter air to tender plants. 
Especially is this true of gratitude ; to be 
coldly silent, when the heart is grateful, is a 
sin against love. When we have a word of 
thanks in our heart, which we feel we might 
honestly speak, and which we do not speak, we 
have sorely wronged our friend. 



2l6 THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 

Especially in homes ought there to be more 
grateful expression. We wrong home friends 
more than any other friends. Home is where 
love is truest and tenderest. We need never 
fear being misunderstood by the loved ones 
who there cluster about us. Yet too often 
home is the very place where we are most 
miserly of grateful and appreciative words. 
We let gentle spirits starve close beside us for 
the words of affectionateness that lie warm, yet 
unspoken, on our tongues. None of us know 
what joy and strength we could impart to others, 
if only we would train ourselves to give fitting, 
delicate, and thoughtful expression to the 
gratitude that is in our hearts. We would 
become blessings to all about us, and would 
receive into our life new gladness. Nothing is 
sadder than the sorrow witnessed about many 
a coffin ; the grief of bereavement and loss 
made bitter by the regret that now the too 
slow gratitude of the heart shall never have 
opportunity to utter itself in the ear which 
waited so long, hungry, and in vain, for the 
word that would have given such comfort. 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 21? 

" Over the coffin pitiful we stand, 
And place a rose within the helpless hand, 
That yesterday, mayhap, we would not see, 
When it was meekly offered. On the heart 
That often ached for an approving word, 
We lay forget-me-nots — we turn away, 
And find the world is colder for the loss 
Of this so faulty and so loving one. 

" Think of that moment, ye who reckon close 
With love — so much for every gentle thought ; 
The moment when love's richest gifts are naught : 
When a pale flower, upon a pulseless breast, 
Like your regret, exhales its sweets in vain." 

But it is not enough that we be grateful and 
show our gratitude to the human friends who 
do us kindnesses. It is to God that we owe all. 
Every good and perfect gift, no matter how it 
reaches us, through what messenger, in what 
form, " cometh down from above, from the Father 
of lights. " All the blessings of Providence, all 
the tender things that come to us through human 
love and friendship, are God's gifts. 

" Whence came the father-heart in man, 
The mother-heart in woman? 
The love throughout the cosmic plan 
Which makes God's children human? 



2l8 THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 

" These never came : what we control 
Is good because 'tis given, 
And all made better to man's soul 
By the sweet touch of heaven." 

We owe thanks to God, therefore, for all that 
we receive. When we have shown gratitude to 
our human benefactors, we still owe our Heavenly- 
Father thanks and gratitude. It is possible, too, 
for us to be grateful to the friends who help us, 
and yet be as atheists, never recognizing God, 
nor giving him any thanks. This is the sorest 
sin of all. We rob God, and hurt his heart, 
every time we receive any favor at whatsoever 
hand, and fail to speak our praise to him. 

Whatever we may say about man's ingrati- 
tude to his fellow-men, there is no question 
about man's lack of gratitude to God. We are 
continually receiving mercies and favors from 
him, and yet, are there not days and days with 
most of us, in which we lift no heart and speak 
no word in praise ? Our prayers are largely 
requests and supplications for help and favor, 
with but little adoration and worship. We con- 
tinue asking and asking, and God continues giv- 



THE SIN OF INGRATITUDE. 219 

ing and giving ; but how many of us remember 
always or often to give thanks for answered 
prayer ? The angel of requests — so the legend 
runs — goes back from earth heavily laden 
every time he comes to gather up the prayers 
of men. But the angel of thanksgiving, of 
gratitude, has almost empty hands as he 
returns from his errands to this world. Yet 
ought we not to give thanks for all that we 
receive and for every answered request ? If 
we were to do this our hearts would always be 
lifted up toward God in praise. 

There is a story of some great conductor of 
a musical festival suddenly throwing up his 
baton, and stopping the performance, crying, 
"Flageolet ! " The flageolet was not doing its 
part and the conductors trained ear missed its 
one note in the large orchestra. Does not 
God miss any voice that is silent in the music 
of earth that rises up to him ? And are there 
not many voices that are silent, taking no part 
in the song, giving forth no praise ? Shall we not 
quickly start our heart-song of gratitude, calling 
upon every power of our being to praise God ? 



CHAPTER XXI. 

SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

° The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; 
The charities that sooth and heal and bless 
Are scattered at the feet of men like flowers. 
* * * * The smoke ascends 
To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth 
As from the lofty palace." 

—•William Wordsworth. 

Home life ought to be happy. The bene- 
diction of Christ on every home to which he is 
welcomed as an abiding guest is, " Peace be to 
this house." While perfection of happiness is 
unattainable in this world, rich, deep, heart- 
filling happiness certainly may be, and ought 
to be, attained. 

Yet it requires wise building and delicate 
care to make a home truly and perfectly happy. 
Such a home does not come as a matter of 
course, by natural growth, wherever a family 
takes up its abode. Happiness has to be 

220 



SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 221 

planned for, lived for, sacrificed for, ofttimes 
suffered for. Its price in a home is always the 
losing of self on the part of those who make up 
the household. Home happiness is the incense 
that rises from the altar of mutual self-sacrifice. 

It may be said, in a word, that Christ him- 
self is the one great, blessed secret of all homa 
happiness. Christ at the marriage altar; 
Christ when the baby is born ; Christ when 
the baby dies ; Christ in the days of plenty ; 
Christ in the pinching times ; Christ in all the 
household life ; Christ in the sad hour when 
farewells must be spoken, when one goes on 
before and the other stays, bearing the burden 
of an unshared grief. Christ is the secret of 
happy home life. 

But for the sake of simplicity the lesson may 
be broken up. For one thing, the husband has 
much to do in solving the problem. Does a man 
think always deeply of the responsibility he 
assumes when he takes a young wife away 
from the shelter of mother-love and father-love, 
the warmest, softest human nest in this world, 
and leads her into a new home, where his love 



222 SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

is to be henceforth her only shelter ? No man 
is fit to be the husband of a true woman who is 
not a good man. He need not be great, nor 
brilliant, nor rich, but he must be good, or he 
is not worthy to take a gentle woman's tender 
life into his keeping. 

Then he must be a man, true, brave, gener 
ous, manly. He must be a good provider. He 
must be a sober man; no man who comes home 
intoxicated, however rarely, is doing his share in 
making happiness for his wife and family. He 
must be a man of pure, blameless life, whose 
name shall grow to be an honor and a pride in 
his household. Husbands have a great deal to 
do with the matter of happiness at home. 

The wife, too, has a responsibility. It should 
be understood at the very beginning, that good 
housekeeping is one of the first secrets of a 
happy home. If a man must be a good pro- 
vider, a woman must be a good home-maker. 
No woman is ready to marry until she has mas- 
tered the fine arts of housekeeping. Home is 
the wife's kingdom. She holds very largely in 
her hands the happiness of the hearts that nes- 



SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 22$ 

tie there. The best husband, the truest, the 
noblest, the gentlest, the richest-hearted, cannot 
make his home happy if his wife be not in 
every sense a helpmeet. In the last analysis, 
home happiness does depend on the wife. She 
is the true home-maker. 

Children, too, are great blessings, when God 
sends them, bringing into the home rich possi- 
bilities of happin ess. They cost care, and demand 
toil and sacrifice, of ttimes causing pain and grief : 
yet the blessing they bring repays a thousand 
times the care and cost. It is a sacred hour in 
a home when a baby is born and laid in the arms 
of a young father and mother. It brings frag- 
ments of heaven trailing after it to the home of 
earth. There are few deeper, purer joys ever 
experienced in this world than the joy of true 
parents at the birth of a child. Much of home's 
happiness along the years is made by the chil- 
dren. We say we train them, but they train us 
ofttimes more than we train them. Our lives 
grow richer, our hearts are opened, our love be- 
comes holier when the children are about us. 
Croons a young mother over her babe : — 



224 SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

" And art thou mine, thou helpless, trembling thing, 
Thou lovely presence ? Bird, where is thy wing ? 
How pure thou art ! fresh from the fields of light, 
Where angels garner grain in robes of white. 

** Didst thou bring * sealed instructions ' with thee, dove, 
How to unlock the fount of mother-love ? 
Full well dost thou fulfil thy winsome part ; 
With holy fire they're writ upon my heart, 

11 My child, I fear thee ! thou'rt a spirit, soul ! 
How shall I walk before thee? keep my garments whole? 
O Lord, give strength, give wisdom for the task, 
To train this child for thee ! Yet more I ask : 

11 Life of my life, for thee I crave best gifts and glad, 
More than, even in dreams, thy mother had ! 
O Father ! fine this gold ! Oh, polish this, my gem ! 
Till it is fair and fitting for thy diadem." 

Jesus said of little children that those who re* 
ceive them, in his name, receive him. May we not 
then say that children bring great possibility of 
blessing and happiness to a home ? They come 
to us as messengers from heaven, bearing mes- 
sages from God. Yet we may not know their 
value while we have them. Ofttimes, indeed, it is 



SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 22$ 

only the empty crib and the empty arms that reveal 
to us the full measure of home happiness that we 
get from the children. Those to whom God gives 
children should receive them with reverence. 
There are homes where mothers, who once wea- 
ried easily of children's noises, sit now with 
aching hearts, and would give the world to have a 
baby to nurse, or a rollicking boy to care for. Chil- 
dren are among the secrets of a happy home. 

Turning to the life of the household, affec- 
tionateness is one of the secrets of happiness. 
There are hundreds of homes in which there is 
love that would die for its dear ones; and yet 
hearts are starving there for love's daily bread. 
There is a tendency in some homes to smother 
all of love's tenderness, to suppress it, to choke 
it back. There are homes where the amenities 
of affection are unknown, and where hearts 
starve for daily bread. There are husbands 
and wives between whom love's converse has 
settled into the baldest conventionalities 
There are parents who never kiss their children 
after they are babies, and who discourage in 
them as they grow up all longing for caresses. 



226 SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

There are homes whose daily life is marred by 
incessant petty strifes and discourtesies. 

These are not exaggerations. Yet there is 
love in these homes, and all that is needed is 
that it be set free to perform its sweet ministry. 
There are cold, cheerless homes which could be 
warmed into love's richest glow in a little while, 
if all the hearts of the household were to grow 
affectionate in expression. Does the busy hus- 
band think that his weary wife would not care 
any longer for the caresses and marks of ten- 
derness with which he used to thrill her ? Let 
him return again for a month to his old-time 
fondness, and then ask her if these youthful 
amenities are distasteful to her. Do parents 
think their grown-up children are too big to be 
petted, to be kissed at meeting and parting ? 
Let them restore again, for a time, something 
of the affectionateness of the childhood days, 
and see if there is not a blessing in it. Many 
who are longing for richer home happiness, 
need only to pray for a spring-time of love, 
with a tenderness that is not afraid of affec- 
tionate expression. 



SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE, 22J 

" Comfort one another ; 

With the hand-clasp close and tender, 

With the sweetness love can render, 
And looks of friendly eyes. 

Do not wait with grace unspoken 

While life's daily bread is broken: 
Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies." 

We ought not to fear to speak our love at 
home. We should get all the tenderness pos- 
sible into the daily household life. We should 
make the morning good-byes, as we part at the 
breakfast-table, kindly enough for final fare- 
wells ; for they may be indeed final farewells. 
Many go out in the morning who never come 
home at night ; therefore, we should part, even 
for a few hours, with kindly word, with linger- 
ing pressure of the hand, lest we may never 
look again in each other's eyes. Tenderness in 
a home is not a childish weakness, is not a 
thing to be ashamed of; it is one of love's 
sacred duties. Affectionate expression is one 
of the secrets of happy home life. 

Religion is another of these secrets. It is 
where the Gospel of Christ is welcomed that 



228 SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

heaven's benediction falls : " Peace be to this 
house/' There may be a certain measure of 
happiness in a home without Christ, but it lacks 
something at best, and then when sorrow comes, 
and the sun of earthly joy is darkened, there are 
no lamps of heavenly comfort to lighten the 
darkness. Sad indeed is the Christless home, 
when a beloved one lies dead within its doors. 
No words of Christian comfort have any power 
to console, because there is no faith to receive 
them. No stars shine through their cypress- 
trees. But how different it is in the Christian 
home, in like sorrow ! The grief is just as sore, 
but the truth of immortality sheds holy light 
on the darkness, and there is a deep joy which 
transfigures the sorrow. 

Then may we not even put sorrow down as 
one of the secrets of happiness in a true Chris- 
tian home ? This may seem at first thought a 
strange suggestion. But there surely are homes 
that have passed through experiences of afflic- 
tion that have a deeper, richer, fuller joy now 
than they had before the grief came. The sor- 
row sobered their gladness, making it less hila- 



SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 22<) 

rious, but no less sweet. Bereavement drew all 
the home hearts closer together. The loss of 
one from the circle made those that remained 
dearer to each other than before. The tears 
became crystalline lenses through which faith 
saw more deeply into heaven. Then in the 
sorrow Christ came nearer, entering more really 
into the life of the home. Prayer has meant 
more since the dark days. There has been a 
new fragrance of love in the household. There 
are many homes whose present rich, deep, quiet 
happiness sorrow helped to make. 

But it is not in sorrow only that religion gives 
its benediction. It makes all the happiness 
sweeter to have the assurance of God's love and 
favor abiding in the household. Burdens are 
lighter because there is One who shares them 
all. The morning prayer of the family, when 
all bow together, makes the whole day fairer; 
and the evening prayer before sleep, makes all 
feel safer for the night. Then religion inspires 
unselfishness, thoughtfulness, the spirit of mu- 
tual helpfulness, of burden-bearing, and serving, 
and thus enriches the home life. 



23O SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 

After a while the young folks scatter away, 
setting up homes of their own. How beautiful 
it is then to see the old couple, who, thirty or 
forty years before, stood together at the mar- 
riage altar, standing together still, with love as 
true and pure and tender as ever, waiting to go 
home. By and by the husband goes away and 
comes back no more, and then the wife is lone- 
some and longs to go too. A little later and 
she also is gone, and they are together again on 
the other side, those dear old lovers, to be 
parted henceforth nevermore. And that is the 
blessed end of a happy Christian home. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 

"'The wind that blows can never kill 

The tree God plants; 
It bloweth east; it bloweth west; 
The tender leaves have little rest, 
But any wind that blows is best. 

The tree God plants 
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still, 
Spreads wider boughs, for God's good-will 

Meets all its wants." 

— Lillie E. Barr, 

One of the papers tells of a newly discovered 
flower. It is called the snow-flower. It has been 
found in the northern part of Siberia. The 
plant shoots up out of the ice and frozen soil. 
It has three leaves, each about three inches in 
diameter. They grow on the side of the stem 
toward the north. Each of the leaves appears 
to be covered with little crystals of snow. The 
flower, when it opens, is star-shaped, its petals 
being of the same length as the leaves, and 

231 



232 GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 

about half an inch in width. On the third day 
the extremities of the anthers show minute 
glistening specks, like diamonds, which are the 
seeds of this wonderful flower. 

Is not this strange snow-flower an illustration 
of many Christian lives ? God seems to plant 
them in the ice and snow ; yet they live and 
grow up out of the wintry cold into fair and 
wondrous beauty. We should say that the love- 
liest lives of earth would be those that are reared 
amid the gentlest, kindliest influences, under 
summer skies, in the warm atmosphere of ease 
and comfort. But the truth is that the noblest 
developments of Christian character are grown 
in the wintry garden of hardship, struggle, and 
sorrow. 

Trial should not, therefore, be regarded with 
discouragement, as something which will stunt 
and dwarf the life and mar its beauty. It should 
be accepted rather, when it comes, as part of 
God's discipline, through which he would bring 
out the noblest and best possibilities of our 
character. Perhaps we would be happier for 
the time if we had easier, more congenial con- 



GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 233 

ditions. Children might be happier without 
restraint, without family government, without 
chastening — just left to grow up into all wil- 
fulness and waywardness. But there is some- 
thing better in life than present happiness. 
Disciplined character in manhood, even though 
it has been gotten through stern and severe 
home-training, is better than a childhood and 
youth of unrestraint, with a worthless manhood 
as the outcome. A noble life, bearing God's 
image, even at the price of much pain and self- 
denial, is better than years of freedom from care 
and sacrifice with a life unblessed and lost at the 
end. "To serve God and love him," says one, 
" is higher and better than happiness, though it 
be with wounded feet and bleeding hands and 
heart loaded with sorrow." 

" So much we miss 
If love is weak ; so much we gain 
If love is strong. God thinks no pain 
Too sharp or lasting to ordain 
To teach us this." 

It is well that we should understand how to 
receive trial so as to get from its hard experi- 



234 GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 

ence the good it has for us. For one thing, we 
should accept it always reverently. Resistance 
forfeits the blessing which can be yielded only 
to the loving, submissive spirit. Teachableness 
is the unvarying condition of learning. To rebel 
against trial is to miss whatever good it may 
have brought for us. There are some who re- 
sent all severity and suffering in their lot as 
unkindness in God. These grow no better 
under divine chastening, but instead are hurt by 
it. When we accept the conditions of our life, 
however hard, as divinely ordained, and as the 
very conditions in which, for a time, we will 
grow the best, we are ready to get from them 
the blessing and good intended in them for us. 
Another important suggestion is that we faint 
not under trial. There are those who give up 
and lose all their courage and faith when trouble 
comes. They cannot endure suffering. Sorrow 
crushes them. They break down at once under 
a cross and think they never can go on again. 
There have been many lives crushed by affliction 
or adversity, which have not risen again out of 
the dust. There have been mothers, happy and 



GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 235 

faithful before, out of whose home one child has 
been taken, and who have lost all interest in 
life from that day, letting their home grow 
dreary and desolate and their other children go 
uncared for, as they sat with folded hands in the 
abandonment of their despairing, uncomforted 
grief. There have been men with bright hopes, 
who have suffered one defeat or met with one 
loss, and then have let go in their discourage- 
ment and have fallen into the dust of failure, 
never trying to rise again. 

Nothing is sadder in life than such yieldings. 
They are unworthy of immortal beings. The 
divine intention in trial never is to crush us, but 
always to do good to us in some way, to bring 
out in us new energy of life. Whatever the 
loss, struggle, or sorrow, we should accept it in 
love, humility, and faith, take its lessons, and 
then go on into the life that is before us. When 
one child is taken out of a home, the mother 
should, with more reverent heart and more 
gentle hand, turn the whole energy of her chas- 
tened life into love's channels, living more than 
ever before for her home and the children that 



236 GOD 'S WINTER PLANTS. 

are left to her. The man who has felt the stun- 
ning blow of a sudden grief or loss should kiss 
the hand of God that has smitten, and quickly 
arise and press onward to the battles and duties 
before him. We should never accept any defeat 
as final. Though it be in life's last hours, with 
only a mere fringe of margin left, and all our 
past failure and loss, still we should not despair. 

" What though the radiance which was once so bright, 
Be now forever taken from my sight ; 
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, 
We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind." 

There is nowhere any better illustration of 
the way we should always rise again out of trial 
than we have in the life of St. Paul. From the 
day of his conversion till the day of his death, 
trouble followed him. He was misunderstood ; 
he was cast out for Christ's sake ; he met per- 
secution in every form ; he was shipwrecked ; 
he lay in dungeons ; he was deserted by his 
friends. But he never fainted, never grew dis- 
couraged, never spoke one word about giving 



GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 237 

up. " Cast down, but not destroyed," was the 
story of his life. He quickly arose out of every 
trial, every adversity, with a new light in his 
eye, a new enthusiasm in his heart. He could 
not be defeated, for he had Christ in him. 
Shall we not catch St. Paul's unconquerable 
spirit, that we may never faint in any trial ? 

It requires faith to meet trouble and adversity 
heroically. Undoubtedly, at the time, the bless- 
ing is not apparent in the sorrow or the defeat. 
All seems disastrous and destructive. It is in 
the future, in the outworking, that the good is 
to come. It is a matter of faith, not of sight. 
" All chastening seemeth for the present to be 
not joyous, but grievous ; yet afterward it yield- 
eth peaceable fruit unto them that have been 
exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteous- 
ness." Oh, the blessing of God's "afterwards" ! 
Jacob one day thought and said that all things 
were against him, but afterward he saw that 
his great afflictions and losses were wrought in 
as parts of a beautiful plan of love for him. The 
disciples thought that the cross was the destruc- 
tion of all their Messianic hopes ; afterward they 



238 GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 

saw that it was the very fulfilment of these hopes. 
The pruning, which at the time cuts so into the 
life of the vine, lopping off great, rich branches, 
afterward is seen to have been the saving and 
enriching of the whole vine. So we always 
need faith. We must believe against appear- 
ances. 

" Under the fount of ill 
Many a cup doth fill, 

And the patient lip, though it drinketh oft, 
Finds only the bitter still. 

"Nevertheless, I know, 
Out of the dark must grow. 
Sooner or later, whatever is fair, 
Since the heavens have willed it so." 

Back and forth the plough was driven. The 
field was covered with grasses and lovely flow- 
ers, but remorselessly through them all the 
share tore its way, cutting furrow after furrow. 
It seemed that all the beauty was being hope- 
lessly destroyed. But by and by harvest-time 
came, and the field waved with golden wheat. 
That was what the ploughman's faith saw from 
the beginning. 



GOD'S WINTER PLANTS. 239 

Sorrow seems to destroy the life of a child of 
God. Its rude share ploughs again and again 
through it, making many a deep furrow, gashing 
its beauty. But afterward a harvest of blessing 
and good grows up out of the crushed and 
broken life. That is what God intends always 
in trial and sorrow. 

Let us have the ploughman's faith, and we 
shall not faint when the share is driven through 
our heart. Then by faith we shall see beyond 
the pain and trial the blessing of richer life, of 
whiter holiness, of larger fruitfulness. And to 
win that blessing will be worth all the pain and 
trial. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 

"Let me not die before I've done for thee 
My earthly work, whatever it may be. 
Call me not hence, with mission unfulfilled; 
Let me not leave my space of ground untilled ; 
Impress this truth upon me, that not one 
Can do my portion, that I leave undone." 

We are all builders. We may not erect any 
house or temple on a city street, for human eyes 
to see, but every one o£ us builds a fabric which 
God and angels see. Life is a building. It 
rises slowly, day by day, through the years. 
Every new lesson we learn lays a block on the 
edifice which is rising silently within us. Every 
experience, every touch of another life on ours, 
every influence that impresses us, every book 
we read, every conversation we have, every act 
of our commonest days, adds something to the 
invisible building. Sorrow, too, has its place in 
240 



UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 24 1 

preparing the stones to lie on the life-wall. All 
life furnishes the material. 

1 ' Oui to-days and yesterdays 
Are the blocks with which we build." 

There are many noble fabrics of character 
reared in this world. But there are also many 
who build only low, mean huts, without beauty, 
which will be swept away in the testing-fires of 
judgment. There are many, too, whose life- 
work presents the spectacle of an unfinished 
building. There was a beautiful plan to begin 
with, and the work promised well for a little 
time ; but after a while it was abandoned and 
left standing, with walls half-way up, a useless 
fragment, open and exposed, an incomplete, 
inglorious ruin, telling no story of past splendor 
as do the ruins of some old castle or coliseum, 
a monument only of folly and failure. 

H There is nothing sadder/' writes one, "than 
an incomplete ruin ; one that has never been of 
use ; that never was what it was meant to be ; 
about which no pure, holy, lofty associations 
cling, no thoughts of battles fought and vie- 



242 UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 

tories won, or of defeats as glorious as victories. 
God sees them where we do not. The highest 
tower may be more unfinished than the lowest 
to him." 

We must not forget the truth of this last 
sentence. There are lives which to our eyes 
seem only to have been begun and then aban- 
doned, which to God's eyes are still rising into 
more and more graceful beauty. Here is one 
who began his life-work with all the ardor of 
youth and all the enthusiasm of a consecrated 
spirit. For a time his hand never tired, his 
energy never slackened. Friends expected 
great things from him. Then his health gave 
way. The diligent hand lies idle and waiting 
now. His enthusiasm no more drives him 
afield. His work lies unfinished. 

"What a pity!" men say. But wait! He 
has not left an unfinished life-work as God sees 
it. He is resting in submission at the Master's 
feet and is growing meanwhile as a Christian. 
The spiritual temple in his soul is rising slowly 
in the silence. Every day is adding something 
to the beauty of his character, as he learns the 



UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 243 

/essons of patience, confidence, peace, joy, love. 
His building at the last will be more beautiful 
than if he had been permitted to toil on through 
many busy years, carrying out his own plans. 
He is fulfilling God's purpose for his life. 

We must not measure spiritual building by 
earthly standards. Where the heart remains 
loyal and true to Christ ; where the cross of 
suffering is taken up cheerfully and borne 
sweetly ; where the spirit is obedient though the 
hands lie folded and the feet must be still, the 
temple rises continually toward finished beauty. 

Or here is one who dies in early youth. 
There was great promise in the beautiful life. 
Affection had reared for it a noble fabric of 
hope. Perhaps the oeauty had begun to shine 
out in the face, and the hands had begun to 
show their skill. Then death came and all the 
fair hopes were folded away. The visions of 
loveliness and the dreams of noble attainments 
and achievements lay like withered flowers upon 
the grave. An unfinished life ! friends cry in 
their disappointment and sorrow. So it seems, 
surely, to love's eyes, from the earth-side. But 



244 UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 

so it is not, as God's eye looks upon it. There 
is nothing unfinished that fulfils the divine 
plan. God cuts off no young life till its earthly 
work is done. Then the soul-building which 
began here and seemed to be interrupted by 
death, was only hidden from our eyes by a thin 
veil, behind which it still goes up with unbroken 
continuity, rising into fairest beauty in the 
presence of God. 

But there are abandoned life-buildings whose 
story tells only of shame and failure. Many 
persons begin to follow Christ, and after a little 
time turn away from their profession and leave 
only a pretentious beginning to stand as a ruin 
to be laughed at by the world and to dishonor 
the Master's name. 

Sometimes it is discouragement that leads 
men to give up the work to which they have 
put their hand. In one of his poems, Words- 
worth tells a pathetic story of a straggling heap 
of unhewn stones, and the beginning of a sheep- 
fold which was never finished. With his wife 
and only son, old Michael, a Highland shepherd, 
dwelt for many years in peace. But trouble 



UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 245 

came which made it necessary that the son 
should go away to do for himself for a while. 
For a time good reports came from him, and 
the old shepherd would go out when he had 
leisure and would work on the sheepfold which 
he was building. By and by, however, sad 
news came from Luke. In the great dissolute 
city he had given himself to evil courses. 
Shame fell on him and he was driven to seek a 
hiding-place beyond the seas. The sad tidings 
broke the old father's heart. He went about 
as before, caring for his sheep. To the hollow 
dell, too, he would repair from time to time, 
meaning to build at the unfinished fold. But 
the neighbors in their pity noticed that he did 
little work in those sad days. 

" Tis believed by all 
That many and many a day he thither went 
And never lifted up a single stone. 
There by the sheepfold sometimes was he seen 
Sitting alone, with that his faithful dog, 
Then old, beside him, lying at his feet. 
The length of full seven years from time to time 
He at the building of his sheepfold wrought, 
And left the work unfinished when he died." 



246 UNFINISHED LIFE-BUIIDING. 

Years after the shepherd was gone the re- 
mains of the unfinished fold were still there, a 
sad memorial of one who began to build but did 
not finish. Sorrow broke his heart and his 
hand slacked. 

Too often noble life-buildings are abandoned 
in the time of sorrow, and the hands that were 
quick and skilful before grief came, hang down 
and do nothing more on the temple-wall. In- 
stead, however, of giving up our work and fal- 
tering in our diligence, we should be inspired 
by sorrow to yet greater earnestness in all duty 
and greater fidelity in all life. God does not 
want us to faint under chastening, but to go on 
with our work, quickened to new earnestness 
by grief. 

Want of faith is another cause which leads 
many to abandon their life-temples unfinished. 
Throngs followed Christ in the earlier days of 
his ministry when all seemed bright, who, when 
they saw the shadow of the cross, turned back 
and walked no more with him. They lost their 
faith in him. It is startling to read how near 
even our Lord's apostles came to leaving their 



UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 2tf 

buildings unfinished. Had not their faith come 
again after their Master arose, they would have 
left in this world only sad memorials of failure 
instead of glorious finished temples. 

In these very days there are many who, 
through the losing of their faith, are abandon- 
ing their work on the wall of the temple of 
Christian discipleship, which they have begun 
to build. Who does not know those who once 
were earnest and enthusiastic in Christian life, 
while there was but little opposition, but who 
fainted and failed when it became hard to con- 
fess Christ and walk with him ? 

Then sin, in some form, draws many a builder 
away from his work, to leave it unfinished. It 
may be the world's fascinations that draw him 
from Christ's side. It may be sinful human 
companionships that lure him from loyal friend- 
ship to his Saviour. It may be riches that 
enter his heart and blind his eyes to the attrac- 
tions of heaven. It may be some secret, debas- 
ing lust that gains power over him and para- 
lyzes his spiritual life. Many are there now, 
amid the world's throngs, who once sat at the 



248 UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 

Lord's Table and were among God's people, 
Unfinished buildings their lives are, towers be* 
gun with great enthusiasm and then left to tell 
their sad story of failure to all who pass by. 
They began to build and were not able to finish. 

It is sad to think how much of this unfinished 
work God's angels see as they look down upon 
our earth. Think of the good beginnings which 
never come to anything in the end ; the excel- 
lent resolutions which are never carried out, 
the noble life-plans entered upon by so many 
young people with ardent enthusiasm, but soon 
given up. Think of the beautiful visions and 
fair hopes which might be made splendid real- 
ities, but which fade out, not leaving the record 
of even one sincere, earnest effort to work them 
into reality. 

In all lines of life we see these abandoned 
buildings. The business world is full of them. 
Men began to build, but in a little time they 
were gone, leaving their work uncompleted. 
They set out with gladness, but tired at length 
of the toil, or grew disheartened at the slow 
coming of success, and abandoned their ideal 



UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 249 

when it was perhaps just ready to be realized. 
Many homes present the spectacle of abandoned 
dreams of love. For a time the beautiful vision 
shone in radiance, and two hearts sought to 
make it come true, but then gave it up in 
despair. 

So life everywhere is full of beginnings never 
carried out to completion. There is not a soul- 
wreck on the streets, not a prisoner serving out 
a sentence behind iron bars, not a debased, 
fallen one anywhere, in whose soul there were 
not once visions of beauty, bright hopes, holy 
thoughts and purposes, and high resolves — an 
ideal of something lovely and noble. But alas ! 
the visions, the hopes, the purposes, the resolves, 
never grew into more than beginnings. God's 
angels bend down and see a great wilderness 
of unfinished fabrics, splendid possibilities unful- 
filled, noble might-have-beens abandoned, ghastly 
ruins now, sad memorials only of failure. 

The lesson from all this is, that we should 
finish our work, that we should allow nothing 
to draw us away from our duty, that we should 
never weary in following Christ, that we should 



2 SO UNFINISHED LIFE-BUILDING. 

hold fast the beginning of our confidence stead- 
fast unto the end. We should not falter under 
any burden, in the face of any danger, before 
any demand of cost and sacrifice. No discour- 
agement, no sorrow, no worldly attraction, no 
hardship, should weaken for one moment our 
determination to be faithful unto death. No 
one who has begun to build for Christ should 
leave an unfinished, abandoned life-work to 
grieve the heart of the Master and to be sneered 
at as a reproach to the name he bears. 

Yet we must remember, lest we be discour- 
aged, that only in a relative, human sense can 
any life-building be made altogether complete. 
Our best work is marred and imperfect. ' It is 
only when we are in Christ, and are co-workers 
with him, that anything we do can ever be made 
perfect and beautiful. But the weakest and the 
humblest, who are simply faithful, will stand at 
last complete in him. Even the merest frag- 
ment of life, as it appears in men's eyes, if it 
be truly in Christ, and filled with his love and 
with his Spirit, will appear finished, when pre- 
sented before the divine Presence. To do God's 



UNFINISHED LIFE-B UILDING. 2 5 I 

will, whatever that may be, to fill out his plan, 
is to be complete in Christ, though the stay on 
earth be but for a day, and though the work 
done fulfil no great human plan, and leave no 
brilliant record among men. 

" Thy work unfinished! Do not fear 
Though at his coming may be found 
The stone unset. 

Yet, for thy faith, beyond the skies 
Thine own shall be the longed-for prize. 
He knoweth best who calls from labor now 
To rest, to build no more." 



CHAPTER XXIV, 

IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

" Our feeble frame he knoweth, 
Remembereth we are dust; 
And evermore his face is kind, 

His ways are ever just. 
In evil and in blindness, 

Through darkened maze we rove. 
But still our Father leads us home. 
By strength of mighty love." 

— Margaret E. Sangster. 

The matter of shoes is important. Espe- 
cially is this true when the roads are rough 
and hard. We cannot then get along without 
something strong and comfortable to wear on 
our feet. One would scarcely expect to find 
anything in the Bible about such a need as this. 
Yet it only shows how truly the Bible is fitted 
to all our actual life to discover in it a promise 
referring to shoes. 

In the blessing of Moses, pronounced before 
his death upon the several tribes, there was this 
252 



IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 253 

among other things for Asher : " Thy shoes 
shall be iron." A little geographical note will 
help to make the meaning plain. Part of 
Asher's allotted portion was hilly and rugged. 
Common sandals, made of wood or leather, 
would not endure the wear and tear of the 
sharp, flinty rocks. There was need, therefore, 
for some special kind of shoes. Hence the form 
of the promise : " Thy shoes shall be iron." 

Even the Bible words which took the most 
vivid local coloring from the particular circum- 
stances in which they were originally spoken, 
are yet as true for us as they were for those to 
whom they first came. We have only to get 
disentangled from the local allusions the real 
heart of the meaning of the words, and we have 
an eternal promise which every child of God 
may claim. 

Turning, then, this old-time assurance into a 
word for nineteenth-century pilgrims, we get 
from it some important suggestions. For one 
thing it tells us that we may have some rugged 
pieces of road before we get to the end of our 
life journey. If not, what need would there be 



254 IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

for iron shoes? If the way is to be flower* 
strewn, velvet slippers, as Dr. McLaren some- 
where suggests, would do. No man wants 
iron-soled shoes for a walk through a soft 
meadow. The journey is not likely to be all 
easy. Indeed, an earnest Christian life is never 
easy. No one can live nobly and worthily with- 
out struggle, battle, self-denial. One may find 
easy ways, but they are not the worthiest ways. 
They do not lead upward to the noblest things. 
One reason why many people never grasp the 
visions of beauty and splendor which shine 
before them in early years is because they have 
not courage for rough climbing. 

" I reach a duty, yet I do it not, 

And, therefore, climb no higher ; but if done, 
My view is brightened, and another spot 

Seen on my mortal sun ; 
For be the duty high as angel's flight — 

Fulfil it, and a higher will arise 
Even from its ashes. Duty is our ladder to the skies, 

And climbing not, we fall." 

We shall need our iron shoes if we are to 
make the journey that leads upward to the best 
possibilities of our life. 



IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 255 

But the word is not merely a prophecy of 
rugged paths ; it is also a promise of shoeing 
for the road, whatever it may be. One who is 
preparing to climb a mountain, craggy and pre- 
cipitous, would not put on silk slippers ; he 
would get strong, tough shoes, with heavy 
nails in the soles. When God sends us on a 
journey over steep and flinty paths he will not 
fail to provide us with suitable shoes. 

Asher's portion was not an accidental one ; 
it was of God's choosing. Nor is there any 
accident in the ordering of the place, the con- 
ditions, the circumstances, of any child of 
God's. Our times are in God's hands. No 
doubt, then, the hardnesses and difficulties of 
any one's lot are part of the divine ordering for 
the best growth of the person's life. 

There was a compensation in Asher's rough 
portion. His rugged hills had iron in them. 
This law of compensation runs through all God's 
distribution of gifts. In the animal world there 
is a wonderful harmony, often noted, between 
the creatures and the circumstances and condi- 
tions amid which they are placed. The same 



256 IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

law rules in the providence of human life. One 
man's farm is hilly and hard to till, but deep 
down beneath its ruggedness, buried away in 
its rocks, there are rich minerals. One person's 
lot in life is hard, with peculiar obstacles, diffi- 
culties and trials ; but hidden in it there are 
compensations of some kind. One young man 
is reared in affluence and luxury. He never 
experiences want or self-denial, never has to 
struggle with obstacles or adverse circum- 
stances. Another is reared in poverty and has 
to toil and suffer privation. The latter seems 
to have scarcely an equal chance in life. But 
we all know where the compensation lies in this 
case. It is in such circumstances that grand 
manhood is grown, while too often the petted, 
pampered sons of luxury come to nothing. In 
the rugged hills of toil and hardship, life's finest 
gold is found. 

There are few things from which young peo- 
ple of wealthy families suffer more than from 
over-help. No noble-spirited young man wants 
life made too easy for him by the toil of others. 
What he desires is an opportunity to work for 



IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 2$J 

himself. There are some things no other one 
can give us ; we must get them for ourselves. 
Our bodies must grow through our own exer- 
tions. Our minds must be disciplined through 
our own study. Our hearts' powers must bt 
developed and trained through our own loving 
and doing. One writes of two friends and two 
wavs of showing friendship : — 

%w One brought a crystal goblet overfull 
Of water he had dipped from flowing streams 
That rose afar where I had never trod — 
Too far for even my quickened eye to see. 
They were fair heights, familiar to his feet — 
They were cool springs that greeted him at morn, 
And made him fresh when noon was burning high, 
And sang to him when all the stars were out ; 
His hand had led them forth, and their pure life 
Was husbanded, with sacred thrift, for flower, 
And bird, and beast, and man. The hills were his, 
And his the bright, sweet water. Not to me 
Came its renewal. I was still athirst. 

"The other looked upon me graciously, 
Beheld me wasted with my bitter need, 
And gave me — nothing. With a face severe* 
And prophet brow, he bade me quickly seek 



258 IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

My own hard quarry — there hew out a way 
For the imprisoned waters to flow forth 
Unhindered by the stubborn granite blocks 
That shut them in dark channels. I sprung up, 
For that I knew my Master ; and I smote, 
Even as Moses, my gray, barren rock, 
And found sufficient help for all my house, 
All my servants, all my flocks and herds." 

The best friend we can have is the one, not 
who digs out the treasure for us, but who 
teaches and inspires us with our own hands to 
open the rocks and find the treasures for our- 
selves. The digging out of the iron will do us 
more good than even the iron itself when it is 
dug out. 

Shoes of iron are promised only to those who 
are to have rugged roads, not to those whose 
path lies amid the flowers. There is a comfort- 
ing suggestion here for all who find peculiar 
hardness in their life. Peculiar favor is pledged 
to them. God will provide for the ruggedness 
of their way. They will have a divine blessing 
which would not be theirs but for the roughness 
and ruggedness. The Hebrew parallelism gives 
the same promise, without figure, in the remain- 



IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 2$g 

ing words of the same verse : " As thy days so 
shall thy strength be." Be sure, if your path is 
rougher than mine, you will get more help than I 
will. There is a most delicate connection between 
earth's needs and heaven's grace. Days of strug- 
gle get more grace than calm, quiet days. When 
night comes stars shine out which never would 
have appeared had not the sun gone down. Sor- 
row draws comfort that never would have come 
in joy. For the rough roads there are iron shoes. 

There is yet another suggestion in this old- 
time promise. The divine blessing for every 
experience is folded up in the experience itself, 
and will not be received in advance. The iron 
shoes would not be given until the rough roads 
were reached. There was no need for them 
until then, and besides, the iron to make them 
was treasured in the rugged hills and could not 
be gotten until the hills were reached. 

A great many people worry about the future. 
They vex themselves by anxious questioning as 
to how they are going to get through certain 
anticipated experiences. We had better learn 
once for all that there are in the Bible no prom- 



26o IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

ises of provision for needs while the needs are 
yet future. God does not put strength into 
our arms to-day for the battles of to-morrow; 
but when the conflict is actually upon us, the 
strength comes. "As thy days so shall thy 
strength be." 

Some people are forever unwisely testing 
themselves by questions like these : " Could 
I endure sore bereavement ? Have I grace 
enough to bow in submission to God, if he 
were to take away my dearest treasure ? Or 
could I meet death without fear ? " Such ques- 
tions are unwise, because there is no promise of 
grace to meet trial when there is no trial to be 
met. There is no assurance of strength to bear 
great burdens when there are no great burdens 
to be borne. Help to endure temptation is not 
promised when there are no temptations to be 
endured. Grace for dying is nowhere promised 
while death is yet far off and while one's duty is 
to live. 

" Of all the tender guards which Jesus drew 
About our frail humanity, to stay 
The pressure and the jostle that alway 



IR ON SHOES FOR R O UGH R OADS. 26 1 

Are ready to disturb, what'er we do, 

And mar the work our hands would carry through, 

None more than this environs us each day 

With kindly wardenship — * Therefore, I say, 

Take no thought for the morrow.' Yet we pay 

The wisdom scanty heed, and impotent 

To bear the burden of the imperious Now, 

Assume the future's exigence unsent. 

God grants no overplus of power : 'tis shed 

Like morning manna. Yet we dare to bow 

And ask, ■ Give us to-day our morrow's bread.' " 

There is a story of shipwreck which yields an 
illustration that comes in just here. Crew and 
passengers had to leave the broken vessel and 
take to the boats. The sea was rough, and 
great care in rowing and steering was necessary 
in order to guard the heavily-laden boats, not 
from the ordinary waves, which they rode over 
easily, but from the great cross-seas. Night 
was approaching, and the hearts of all sank as 
they asked what they should do in the darkness 
when they would no longer be able to see these 
terrible waves. To their great joy, however, 
when it grew dark they discovered that they 
were in phosphorescent waters and that each 



262 IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 

dangerous wave rolled up crested with light 
which made it as clearly visible as if it were 
mid-day. 

So it is that life's dreaded experiences, when 
we meet them, carry in themselves the light 
which takes away the peril and the terror. 
The night of sorrow comes with its own lamp 
of comfort. The hour of weakness brings its 
own secret of strength. By the brink of the 
bitter fountain itself grows the tree whose 
branch will heal the waters. The wilderness 
with its hunger and no harvest has daily manna. 
In dark Gethsemane, where the load is more 
than mortal heart can bear, an angel appears, 
ministering strength that gives victory. When 
we come to the hard, rough, steep path we find 
iron for shoes. The iron will be in the very 
hills over which we shall have to climb. 

So we see that the matter of shoes is very 
important. We are pilgrims here and we can- 
not walk barefoot on this world's rugged roads. 
Are our feet shod for the journey ? 

"How can I get shoes, and where ?" one asks. 
Do you remember about Christ's feet, that they 



IRON SHOES FOR ROUGH ROADS. 263 

were pierced with nails ? Why was it ? That 
we might have shoes to wear on our feet, and 
that they might not be cut and torn on the way, 

Christ's dear feet were wounded and sore 
with long journeys over thorns and stones, and 
were pierced through with cruel nails, that our 
feet might be shod for earth's rough roads, and 
might at last enter the gates of pearl and walk 
on heaven's gold-paved streets. 

Dropping all figure, the whole lesson is that 
we cannot get along on our life's pilgrimage 
without Christ ; but having Christ we shall be 
ready for anything that may come to us along 
the days and years. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE SHUTTING OP DOORS. 

11 Never delay 
To do the duty which the hour brings, 
Whatever it be in great or smaller things; 

For who doth know 
What he shall do the coming day?" 

The shutting of a door is a little thing and 
yet it may have infinite meaning. It may fix a 
destiny for weal or for woe. When God shut 
the door of the ark the sound of its closing was 
the knell of exclusion to those who were with- 
out, but it was the token of security to the little 
company of trusting ones who were within. 
When the door was shut upon the bridegroom 
and his friends who had gone into the festal 
hall, thus sheltering them from the night's 
darkness and danger, and shutting them in 
with joy and gladness, there were those outside 
to whose hearts the closing of that door smote 
264 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 265 

despair and woe. To them it meant hopeless 
exclusion from all the privileges of those who 
were within and exposure to all the sufferings 
and perils from which those favored ones were 
protected. 

Here we have hints of what may come from 
the closing of a door. Life is full of illustra- 
tions. We are continually coming up to doors 
which stand open for a little while and then are 
shut. An artist has tried to teach this in a 
picture. Father Time is there with inverted 
hour-glass. A young man is lying at his ease 
on a luxurious couch, while beside him is a table 
spread with rich fruits and viands. Passing by 
him toward an open door are certain figures 
which represent opportunities ; they come to 
invite the young man to nobleness, to manli- 
ness, to usefulness, to worth. First is a rugged, 
sun-browned form, carrying a flail. This is 
labor. He invites the youth to toil. He has 
already passed far by unheeded. Next is a 
philosopher, with open book, inviting the young 
man to thought and study, that he may master 
the secrets in the mystic volume. But this 



2bb THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 

opportunity, too, is disregarded. The youth 
has no desire for learning. Close behind the 
philosopher comes a woman with bowed form, 
carrying a child. Her dress betokens widow- 
hood and poverty. Her hand is stretched out ap- 
pealingly. She craves charity. Looking closely 
at the picture we see that the young man holds 
money in his hand. But he is clasping it tightly, 
and the poor widow's pleading is in vain. Still 
another figure passes, endeavoring to lure and 
woo him from his idle ease. It is the form of 
a beautiful woman, who seeks by love to awaken 
in him noble purposes, worthy of his powers, and 
to inspire him for ambitious efforts. One by 
one these opportunities have passed, with their 
calls and invitations, only to be unheeded. At 
last he is arousing to seize them, but it is too 
late; they are vanishing from sight and the 
door is closing. 

This is a true picture of what is going on all 
the time in this world. Opportunities come to 
every young person, offering beautiful things, 
rich blessings, brilliant hopes. Too often, how- 
ever, these offers and solicitations are rejected 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 267 

and one by one pass by, to return no more. 
Door after door is shut, and at last men stand 
at the end of their days, with beggared lives, 
having missed all that they might have gotten 
of enrichment and good from the passing days. 

Take home. A true Christian home, with its 
love and prayer and all its gentle influences, is 
almost heaven to a child. The fragrance of the 
love of Christ fills all the household life. Holi- 
ness is in the very atmosphere. The benedic- 
tions of affection make every day tender with 
its impressiveness. In all life there come no 
other such opportunities for receiving lovely 
things into the life, and learning beautiful les- 
sons, as in the days of childhood and youth that 
are spent in a home of Christian love. Yet 
how often are all these influences resisted and 
rejected. Then by and by the door is shut. 
The heart that made the home is still in death. 
The gentle hand that wrought such blessing is 
cold. Many a man in mid-life would give all he 
has to creep back for one hour to the old sacred 
place, to hear again his mother's voice in coun- 
sel or in prayer, to feel once more the gentle 



258 THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 

touch of her hand and to have her sweet com* 
fort. But it is too late. The door is shut. 

Take education. Many young people fail to 
realize what golden opportunities come to them 
in their school-days. Too often they make little 
of the privileges they then enjoy. They some- 
times waste in idleness the hours they ought to 
spend in diligent study and helpful reading. 
They might, if they would, fit themselves for 
high and honorable places in after years; but 
they let the days pass with their opportunities. 
By and by they hear the school door shut 
Then, all through their years they move with 
halting step, with dwarfed life, with powers 
undeveloped, unable to accept the higher places 
that might have been theirs if they had been 
prepared for them, failing often in duties and 
responsibilities — all because in youth they 
wasted their school-days and did not seize the 
opportunities that then came to them for prep- 
aration. Napoleon, when visiting his old school, 
said to the pupils, " Boys, remember that every 
hour wasted at school means a chance of mis- 
fortune in future life." Thousands of failures 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 269 

along the years of manhood and womanhood 
attest the truth of this monition. 

Friendship is another opportunity that offers 
great blessing. Before every young person 
stand two kinds of friends, ever reaching out a 
beckoning hand. The one class whisper of 
pleasures that lead to sin and debasement. 
They offer the young man the wine-glass, the 
gambling-table, the gratification of lust and pas- 
sion. They offer the young woman flattery, gay 
dress, the dance, pleasures that will tarnish her 
womanly purity. We all know the end of such 
friendship. 

But there is another class of friends who 
stand before young people, wooing them to 
noble things. They may be plain, perhaps 
homely, almost stern in their earnestness of 
purpose and in the seriousness with which they 
talk of life. They call to toil, to diligence, to 
self-denial, to heroic qualities of character, to 
purity, to usefulness, to " whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are honorable, whatsoever things are 
lovely." It is impossible to overstate the value 



27O THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 

of the blessings that true, wise, and worthy 
friendship offers to the young. It seeks to 
incite and stimulate them to their best in char- 
acter and achievement. It would lift them up 
to lofty attainment, to splendid victoriousness. 
The young people to whom comes the offer of 
such friendship are most highly favored. 

But how often do we see the blessing rejected 
for the solicitation of mere idle pleasures that 
bring no true good, that entangle the life in all 
manner of complications, that lead into the ways 
of temptation, and that too often end in disaster 
and sorrow. 

There is a time for the choosing of friends, 
and when that time is passed and the choice has 
been made, the door is shut. Then it is too 
late to go back. There are many people in 
mid-life, bound now in the chains of evil com- 
panionships, who would give all they have for 
the sweet delights and pure pleasures of friend- 
ship which once might have been theirs, which 
in youth reached out to them in vain white 
hands of importunity and blessing. But it is 
too late ; the door is shut. 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 2? I 

So it is with the opportunities of doing good 
to others, comforting, helping, cheering, lighten- 
ing burdens, giving gladness and joy. We stand 
continually before open doors which we do not 
enter. Ofttimes we shrink with timid feeling 
from the sweet ministry, holding back the sym- 
pathetic word or restraining ourselves from 
the doing of the gentle kindness, thinking our 
proffer of love might be unwelcome. Or we do 
not perceive the opportunity to give a blessing. 
This is true very often, especially in the closer 
and more tender intimacies of life. We do not 
recognize the heart-hunger in our loved ones, 
and we walk with them day by day, failing to 
help them in the thousand ways in which we 
might help them, until they are gone from us 
and the door is shut. Then all we can do is to 
bear tne pain of regret, having only the hope 
that in some way in the life beyond, we may 
be able to pay — though so late — love's debt, 

" How will it be 
When you at last in heaven we see — 
Dear souls, whose footsteps in lost days 
Made musical earth's toil-worn ways, 



272 THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 

While we not half the loneliness 
That bound you to our side could guess? 
Where angels know your footfall we 
Are fain to be. 

" We never knew — 
So heedlessly we walked with you — 
The drops we jostled from your cup, 
That spilt, could not be gathered up ; 
We might have given you foam and glow 
From our own beaker's overflow ; 
Ah ! what we might have been to you 
We never knew. 

" We might have lent 
Such strength, such comfort and content 
To you, out of our ample store ; 
We might have hastened on before 
To lift the shadows from your way, 
Darkened, ere noon, to twilight's gray ; 
With earth's chilled air love's warm heart-scent 
We might have blent. 

M Dear, wistful eyes, 
Ye haunt us with your kind surprise, 
Your tender wonder that a heart 
Should thus be left alone, apart, 
So loving, so misunderstood 
By us, in our self-centred mood: 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 2J$ 

Alas ! in vain to you arise 

Our longing cries. 

" Oh, will you wait 
For us beyond the shining gate? 
Though lovely gifts behind you left, 
We want yourselves ; we are bereft. 
From your new mansion glorious 
Will you lean out to look for us ? 
Shut is the far-off, shining gate — 
Are we too late ? " 

These are but illustrations. The same is 
true in all phases of life. Every day doors are 
opened for us which we do not enter. For a 
little time they stand open with bidding and 
welcome, and then they are closed, to be opened 
no more forever. To every one of us along 
our years there come opportunities, which, if 
accepted and improved, would fit us for worthy 
character, and for noble, useful living, and lead 
us in due time to places of honor and blessing. 
But how many of us there are who reject these 
opportunities and lose the good they brought 
for us from God ! Then one by one the doors 
are shut, cutting off the proffered favors while 
we go on unblessed. 



2/4 THE SHUTTING OF DOORS, 

There is another closing of doors which is 
even sadder than any of those which have been 
suggested. There is a shutting of our own 
heart's door upon God himself. He stands at 
our gate and knocks and there are many who 
never open to him at all, and many more who 
open the door but slightly. The latter, while 
they may receive blessing, yet miss the ful- 
ness of divine revealing which would flood their 
souls with love ; the former miss altogether the 
sweetest benediction of life. 

" He that shuts Love out in turn shall be 

Shut out from Love, and on his threshhold lie 
Howling in outer darkness. Nor for this 
Was common clay made from the common earth, 
Moulded by God and tempered with the tears 
Of angels to the perfect shape of man." 

This sad sound of closing doors, as it falls 
day after day upon our soul's ears, proclaims to 
us continually that something which was ours, 
which was sent to us from God, and for which 
we shall have to answer in judgment, is ours no 
longer, is shut away forever from our grasp. 
It is a sad picture — the five virgins standing 



THE SHUTTING OF DOORS. 275 

at midnight before a closed door through which 
they might have entered to great joy and honor, 
but which to all their wild importunity will open 
no more. It is sad, yet many of us are likewise 
standing before closed doors, doors that once 
stood open to us, but into which we entered 
not, languidly loitering outside until the sound 
of the shutting fell upon our ear as the knell 
of hopeless exclusion : — 

" Too late ! Too late ! Ye cannot enter now ! " 

Of course the past is irreparable and irrevo- 
cable, and it may seem idle to vex ourselves in 
thinking about doors now closed, that no tears, 
no prayers, no loud knockings, can ever open 
again. Yes ; yet the future remains. The 
years that are gone we cannot get back again, 
but new years are yet before us. They too will 
have their open doors. Shall we not learn wis- 
dom as we look back upon the irrevocable past 
and make sure that in the future we shall not 
permit God's doors of opportunity to shut in 
our faces ? 



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